Planting Words

From the fruit of their lips people are filled with good things, and the work of their hands brings them reward.

—Proverbs 12:14

For an embarrassingly long season, I got out of the routine of daily Bible reading. Call it late-stage rebellion or plain old laziness. I just lost track of it as a habit. And then I hit a series of losses—losing a job, losing a friend, losing a pregnancy—and I found that I was desperate for the power and stability of God’s word.

What I also found is that even though I hadn’t been doing regular personal daily study in quite some time, the words I’d memorized many years ago kept coming back to me. My parents and my church and my own study had planted those words deep inside me, and to my great joy, when I needed them most, I found them on my lips and on my heart.

My friend who teaches yoga says you don’t practice yoga for how you feel in the middle of it; you practice it for how it makes you feel the rest of the time. To a certain extent, that’s how God’s word works: sometimes you read a few verses and nothing earth shattering happens. But maybe it wasn’t about that moment. You studied those words so that you’d have them with you when you needed them, maybe even years later.