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Thirsting for the Word of God

What would happen if you could never read your Bible ever again?  What would you do if reading the Bible suddenly became illegal and Bibles were confiscated as contraband?  What would you do if you were deprived of the Word of God?  We humans tend to undervalue that to which we have constant access.  Most Americans have the Internet in their hands.  We can travel around the world in a matter of days.  We can communicate with people around the world instantly.  These possibilities are simply amazing, yet we take them for granted.  We get so used to the novelties of life--technology, food, transportation, etc.--that we take for granted those things for which others would, quite literally, die.  

 Familiarity breeds contempt, they say, and divine revelation is no exception.  The number of copies of the Bible in existence is difficult to fathom, and yet, even Christians, those who claim to love and follow Jesus Christ, fail to appreciate the revealed will of God and the privilege that it is to possess it in a tangible way.  There are disagreements as to exactly how God's revelation works and what form it takes, but every Christian should be able to affirm and rejoice that God has spoken to His creatures. We must put away our modern sense of entitlement and recognize that this is a mystifying and unspeakable blessing.  Consider Amos 8:11-12: 
"Behold, the days come," says the Lord Yahweh (GOD), "that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Yahweh (the LORD).  They will wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they will run back and forth to seek the word of Yahweh (the LORD), and will not find it." (WEB)
Would this sort of famine even bother us?  God promises judgement in the form of taking His Word from His people, but I doubt that the majority of the modern Church would even mind.  Heck, half the churches in America could probably proceed unaffected if the Bible were censured!  We must have a thirst for the Word of God.  We must develop an unquenchable appetite for the revelation of Almighty God.  We must fear a famine of the bread that sustains our physical life far less than we fear a famine of the Bread of Life!  After all, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.  

 The Word of God is the sustenance of the Christian life.  It is the milk that enables us to grow up into salvation.  The increasing availability of the Word is one of the greatest legacies of 20th-Century Christianity, but we have squandered this inheritance.  What should be a blessing has become a curse through our abuse, and, I fear, we will reap the fitting punishment.  If we will ignore the Word, then God will take it from us.  Let us thirst for His Word.  Let us cherish it.  Above all else, let us do all we can to read it and to hear it preached.

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