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There’s an old story about a businessman who got quite a surprise when he was served his in-flight dinner.
Tucked into the corner of his reheated food tray was a roach.
That experience did more than just kill his appetite. It prompted him to write a sharply worded letter to the airline’s customer service department.
His expectations weren’t particularly high. He figured his letter would disappear into File 13.
Imagine his surprise when a few days later he received this personal note from the airline’s CEO:
Dear sir, we are truly grieved by your recent experience on one of our flights. The comfort and safety of our clients is our highest priority.
Therefore I want you to be aware of the steps that we have taken to ensure that this never happens again.
The jet in which you traveled has been taken out of service and will be thoroughly fumigated. We have canceled our contract with our food provider. The entire flight crew has been grounded. They can return to their jobs only after completion of sensitivity training.
Again, please accept my heartfelt apology. It would be the greatest privilege for us to win you back as a customer.
The letter was personally signed by the CEO.
The businessman was impressed. He had never received a personally signed note from his own boss, let alone from the chief executive of a major airline.
That’s when he noticed there was an inter-office Post It note apparently accidentally stuck to the back of the letter. It was addressed to the CEO’s administrative assistant, included his own name and address, and was also in the CEO’s handwriting:
Dear Natalie: When you get the chance, please send this jerk the standard roach letter.
For God so loved the world that he did not send us a standard roach letter.
The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are not cold, impersonal, one-size-fits-all bromides from a Cosmic CEO who frankly could care less what we’re facing this week.
There’s a reason that a particular Bible verse, on a particular day, so often seems to be the precise thing we need to hear.
The apostle Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is theopneustos…”
This term is a hapax legomenon – literally, “once-spoken” – a word that appears only once in the original Greek text of the New Testament. For that matter, it’s never been found in any other Greek documents of the period – a strong hint that Paul coined this word in order to communicate precisely what he wanted to say.
Theopneustos means “God-breathed.”
Scripture is somehow associated with respiration. People traditionally say they believe in “the inspired Word of God.” And others point out that the Bible is a truly “inspiring” book.
But that’s not what Paul is saying. Theopneustos is not a description of the Bible’s effect on its readers. It’s an assertion concerning Scripture’s origin and nature.
While a variety of human authors (at least 40 of them) put pen to paper in order to create the Bible – and their particular personalities definitely shine through – Paul asserts that God is ultimately responsible for the Bible’s contents. God breathed his Word into existence and then breathed life into every page.
The “breath of God” is an important theme in Scripture.
Genesis tells us that God breathed the breath of life into the first human being. Ezekiel reports that God breathed life into the dry bones of the people of Israel. Every time we hold a Bible in our hands, we’re clutching something that was breathed out from the heart and mind of God.
And God’s Spirit personalizes those ancient words and applies them directly to our fears, our doubts, our hopes, and our expectations.
Which, when it comes to filling our souls, makes God’s Word much more like a banquet than airplane food.