(In an attempt to increase my online presence and my writing in general, I have assigned a writing topic to each day of the workweek. On Thursdays I will share a thought that has beeen meaningful or challenging from my devotional reading. I pray it will bless you as much as it does me.)
A friend loaned me this book for my devotions this year. She felt it had enriched her life. So far, I’m agreeing with her. From the back of the book:
Take My Heart, Oh God will do more than motivate you to make intimacy with him a part of your daily discipline. Its rich reminders will help you offer yourself to the one who understands you best and loves you most.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used that phrase, but with a slight twist. God has always been the one “who knows me best and loves me most.” A God wink? It was for me.
Yesterday I read: Our soul thirsts; he alone can satisfy. We hunger to know the depths of God’s love; he fills us to overflowing with nourishment from his Word.
And I wondered, “How hungry am I, how thirsty?”
Then last evening I was reading a book recommended by a blogger/writer I follow, No More Faking Fine. In the introduction she describes her desperate hunger for God. She wrote about how she would go to sleep on the Bible in hopes of absorbing truth for her aching heart.
Odd? Perhaps. But being desperately hungry can bring us to unnatural places and actions.
A dear friend of mine, many years ago, was going through emotional warfare that rocked her soul, threatened the foundations of her faith. She kept a small Bible in her car, and would read it at stop lights: gulping down the promises and soaking up the grace.
It would have been easier to sit at the light and ruminate on her crumbling marriage and the potential disasters waiting around the corner. She could have focused on the problems and pain, and easily shut God out. Where was he when all this started falling apart?
But instead, she chose to fill her mind and her heart with his promises: to never leave her, to make all things work for good, to do exceedingly above and beyond all she could ask or imagine.
One Sunday, right in the middle of all this chaos, she was scheduled to bring the special music during worship. I still don’t know how she did it. She stood in front of the congregation and sang, “And whatever it takes to draw closer to you Lord, that’s what I’ll be willing to do.”
We can’t get to that place running on empty.
How hungry, how thirsty, are you?
I invite you like the Psalmist, “Taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8).”
Fill up on him and his Word.
Pot of Manna 
sounds like you are diving deep into some great books. Love the passion and hunger in the sentence; “And whatever it takes to draw closer to you Lord, that’s what I’ll be willing to do.”
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That sentence comes from an old Gaithersburg song, “Whatever It Takes.” Always makes me think of my friend and humbles me to the core.
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