Encountering The Word of God

[Shakuhachi]

From today’s reading:
Hebrews 4:12-16
“Let us be confident in approaching the throne of grace
The word of God is something alive and active: it cuts like any double-edged sword but more finely: it can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, or joints from the marrow; it can judge the secret emotions and thoughts. No created thing can hide from him; everything is uncovered and open to the eyes of the one to whom we must give account of ourselves.”

The Word of God slipping through the place where the soul is divided by the spirit. What a profound image! How do we experience such aliveness and activity?

I think of it in terms of prayer and I am reminded of something St Theresa said somewhere about the intellect being different from the memory or imagination… So then our identity is not quite the same as what we think, imagine or remember. Perhaps the Word of God can help us to realize these dimensions of our being.

 

[Casilda]

There are many who have been sustained merely by the Words of the Lord.

Deut. 8:1-4
8 “All the commandment which I command you this day you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your fathers. 2 And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not. 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.

Matthew 4:1-4
4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,

‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”