“As a lion or a young lion growls over his prey…” Isaiah 31:4
During my time in school I was jealous of those students who could speed read. They were able to read multiple books and comprehend what they read in the time it took me to get through part of a book. Dismayed I researched techniques to speed up my reading pace only to find out years later that the Christian faith encourages us to read Scripture imaginatively, thoughtfully, prayerfully and slowly.
In Eat This Book: a conversation in the art of spiritual reading Eugene Peterson demonstrates in the first chapter how to read slowly. Peterson notices words that I might pass by on my way to the “good stuff.” For example, in the passage above, Peterson lingers over the word “growls” (hagah) which is the same word in Hebrew for “meditate” in passages such as Psalm 1:2 describing the blessed man or woman whose “delight is in the law of the LORD,” on which “[he/she] meditates (hagah) day and night.” Or one of my favorite verses Psalm 63:6 “I think of [God] upon my bed, and meditate (hagah) on [God] in the watches of the night.” Peterson states, “Isaiah uses this word (hagah) to refer to a lion growling over his prey the way my dog would a bone.”
My seven-year old yellow lab loves to devour sticks and dog bones. When Millie meditates (hagah) on a bone she chews and swallows, using teeth and tongue, stomach and intestines perhaps, in the manner that Isaiah’s lion “growls (hagah) over his prey.” I believe this is how we are to read the Bible as Christians. We are invited to sink our teeth into the pages of Scripture, taste and savor, with our mouths watering and the juices energizing every ounce of our being.
When we slow down our pace, lingering, stalling, meditating (hagah) on the Bible, its words get inside of us transforming our lives: the way we think, speak, and act. Perhaps, that is why John Wesley read from both the Old and New Testaments every morning and night. In our faith tradition reading the Scripture is one of many ways we can experience God’s grace feeding our souls.
In the Gospel of Luke, a lawyer asked Jesus, “How do you read [Scripture]” (Luke 10:26)? My prayer is that we might respond “Slowly,” or “that we ‘growl (hagah) over it.’” Beginning in September we will offer opportunities such as Sunday school classes and/or Adam Hamilton’s study The Way: Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus.I hope that you will come as we meditate (hagah) on God’s Word together.
Hagah over the Scripture,
Nicholas Perry, Pastor
