Walking with words

Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent

I will walk at liberty,
because I study your commandments.
Psalm 119:45

I open my book to the day’s scripture passage both knowing and not knowing what I will find there. I have been reading these same lessons in the same pattern for more than half my life, and yet there is always something new to discover. I linger over a beautiful phrase unnoticed before, or an insight that speaks to me anew, or a deeper understanding of a familiar theme.

My morning study is not scholarly. I do not open reference books or delve into the historical context or look up definitions. Rather, I enter into the text on the page as if it were a landscape. Sometimes I wander through it at a leisurely stroll, sometimes I explore it as if I were on an expedition.

The gift of these holy words is that they continue to speak to me, continue to ground me for the day ahead, continue to connect me to the ancient and the not yet. And continue to call me into expectancy as I spend this season waiting for the breaking in of the Word itself.