{"id":4584,"date":"2025-04-28T09:07:59","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T13:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4584"},"modified":"2025-04-28T09:07:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T13:07:59","slug":"chewing-on-the-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/28\/chewing-on-the-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Chewing on the Word"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

Who\u2019s the most dominant American individual in the history of the Summer Olympics?

Sportscaster Mike Greenberg teases that question in Got Your Answers<\/em>, a book that endeavors to settle \u201cthe top 100 greatest sports arguments.\u201d

Track and field superstar Carl Lewis comes to mind. So does gymnast Simone Biles. How about diver Greg Louganis or heptathlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee?

In truth, it\u2019s not even close. The runaway winner has to be swimmer Michael Phelps. Greenberg points out that no other two Olympians in history have combined<\/em> to win as many gold medals as Phelps won all by himself (23, to be exact).

How do you fuel your body sufficiently to keep racing up and down the pool, setting world records along the way?

The answer is that you eat. A lot. According to Olympics.com, Phelps consumed something like 10,000 calories every day during the Beijing Olympics in 2008:

For breakfast, he had three fried egg sandwiches, with cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, fried onions and mayonnaise, followed by three chocolate-chip pancakes\u2026followed by a five-egg omelet, three sugar-coated slices of French toast, a bowl of grits, and two cups of coffee\u2026 For lunch, he would have a half-kilogram of pasta, two large ham and cheese sandwiches on white bread smothered with mayonnaise, and another set of energy drinks. For dinner, add a pound of pasta with carbonara sauce, a large pizza, and energy drinks.<\/em>

Incredibly, his body fat hovered somewhere around 8 percent. Wouldn\u2019t it be great to eat like Michael Phelps? Actually, nothing\u2019s standing in your way \u2013 as long as you manage, like Phelps, to burn 1,000 calories per hour in your activity of choice.

How do you fuel your spirit sufficiently to walk with God in the midst of every imaginable circumstance?

The answer is that you eat. A lot.

A disciple\u2019s diet involves considerably less mayonnaise while majoring on servings of God\u2019s Word.

The Bible, in fact, is portrayed as a \u201cconsumable\u201d in a surprising number of texts. It is described as milk (I Peter 2:2), honey (Psalm 19:10), and meat (Hebrews 5:12). The prophet Jeremiah declared, \u201cYour words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart\u201d (Jeremiah 15:16). When tempted in the wilderness to transform stones into bread, a famished Jesus insisted that \u201cpeople don\u2019t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God\u201d (Matthew 4:4).

Then there\u2019s Psalm 1, which serves as the thematic doorway to the entire Old Testament collection of 150 psalms.

Blessed is the one<\/em>
Who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked<\/em>
Or stand in the way of sinners<\/em>
Or sit in the seat of mockers.<\/em>
But his delight\u00a0is in the law of the Lord<\/em>
And on his law he\u00a0meditates day and night.<\/em>

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water<\/em>
Which yields its fruit in season<\/em>
And whose leaf does not wither.<\/em>
Whatever that person does prospers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
(Psalm 1:1-3)

According to these words, there is a particular set of conditions by which life will go very well for us.

The person who pursues\u00a0God must\u00a0relentlessly\u00a0meditate on God’s Word.\u00a0\u00a0

The verb we customarily translate “meditate” has several interesting meanings in the original Hebrew.\u00a0One conveys the idea\u00a0of muttering<\/em>.\u00a0During the pre-literary era \u2013 centuries\u00a0before individuals had\u00a0the luxury of carrying around a private\u00a0copy of Scripture \u2013 people memorized vast portions of the Bible.\u00a0During Jesus’ time, for instance, it would not have been unusual for a child\u00a0to commit all 150 psalms to memory.\u00a0People would habitually speak the Bible’s promises, warnings, and teachings aloud,\u00a0under their breath, as a never-ending\u00a0recitation.\u00a0\u00a0

Over time, people would discover that those verses might\u00a0become a kind of “home base” for their minds.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

But ours\u00a0is no longer\u00a0a speech-centered culture.\u00a0Muttering has lost a bit of its edge. It might be best not to mutter, for instance, when one is going through airport security.\u00a0\u00a0

The same Hebrew verb, however, also connotes chewing<\/em> – working out the meaning of what God has conveyed to us through a kind of spiritual rumination.\u00a0The secret to caring for our souls is to keep God\u00a0before our minds as often as we can by consuming generous portions of God\u2019s Word.

What do people tend to think about?\u00a0\u00a0

Our thoughts\u00a0inevitably circle around what we judge to be\u00a0vitally\u00a0important \u2013 perhaps our suddenly fading investment portfolios, or getting payback for past hurts, or standing strong\u00a0in the midst of chaos, or showing up those snobs who disrespected us, or winning the big contract or the big game.\u00a0God has made us in such a way that our minds inevitably linger on what we value.

It’s possible to live for eight or nine decades in the midst of Western culture, and even\u00a0be deemed a highly successful person, yet never stop to think about God for any notable length of time.\u00a0This is called blowing the opportunity of a lifetime.

Psalm 1 declares, “Choose to treasure God by continually turning your mind to the things that God values.\u00a0Do this by chewing on God\u2019s Word. Then you will flourish like a healthy, well-watered tree.”

In the parched environment of the Middle East, water has always been\u00a0a dealbreaker. Access to water is\u00a0the difference between life and death.\u00a0The psalmist knew that the only tree that realistically had a shot at long-term survival was the one that had the good fortune of being planted by a flowing stream.

Here’s the wonderful news:\u00a0You are not a tree<\/em>.

God has given each of us the freedom to decide where we will plant our minds\u00a0this spring.\u00a0\u00a0

Will you park yourself in front of the TV?\u00a0Bury yourself in office projects?\u00a0Devote your best efforts to a video game? Forget\u00a0your anxieties on the pages of\u00a0detective novels?\u00a0Or numb yourself through a mindless addiction?

Choose wisely.

God promises that if we routinely feast on the nourishment of his Word, our lives will flourish.

And as Michael Phelps would be the first to remind us, the only way we\u2019ll ever find out if the \u201cwater\u2019s fine\u201d is by deciding to jump in.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Who\u2019s the most dominant American individual in the history of the Summer Olympics? Sportscaster Mike Greenberg teases that question in Got Your Answers, a book that endeavors to settle \u201cthe top 100 greatest sports arguments.\u201d Track and field superstar Carl Lewis comes to mind. So does gymnast Simone Biles. How about… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4585,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[803,917],"class_list":["post-4584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-meditation","tag-word-of-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4586,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4584\/revisions\/4586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}