I’m thinking ORANGES AND GRAZING. I’m committed to take off the COVID 10 I’ve put on by refocusing my diet and eating more oranges (fruit) and doing less GRAZING! And there is a bit of pressure to get it done.
Here’s what I mean; oranges are raised to produce juice. That’s their function. How do you get juice out of an orange? Answer: you squeeze it! That means putting pressure on it. We should expect to be squeezed to get some things done.
Even God puts some pressure on us in order to get juice from us.
Squeezing a new routine in these days is a challenge with all the changes we have already have had to make. I get squeezed by God to write up articles for the newsletter, sermons, devotionals, meetings, Zooms, etc.
To accomplish these things I graze old newsletters I have written, devotionals I subscribe to, look at posts by colleagues and the UCC. I’m just glad sometimes there is some juice to be squeezed out!
Grazing. If we don’t graze there won’t be any juice to be squeezed out of us. By grazing I mean the consistent wholesale taking in and absorbing material and thinking about it. It’s rolling over in one’s mind all sorts of questions that may have no apparent relation to anything you’re doing. You’re just grazing and packing things in your mind.
Then, BANG! God brings a situation into your life where pressure is applied and out comes this juice you never knew you had! Like a blast about oranges and grazing. Sometimes “ya gotta dig to find something in the dirt”… Colossians 3:16; “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you.”
That’s grazing just for the joy of grazing, not grazing with some particular end in view. It’s filling yourself up with the Word of God for the love of God, not for a particular argument you want to make or a question you want to answer or anything else.
Happy grazing and squeezing!
RB