Maybe we should write this down

We used to tease my dad mercilessly every time he popped a piece of Doublemint gum in his mouth. He chewed gum as enthusiastically as a cow chews her cud, with much lip smacking and gum snapping, his pleasure evident to all. Mom, on the other, although she could snap gum better than anyone else in the family, could also conceal a stick so well that no one could tell she even had gum in her mouth.

I took after Dad. Still do, for that matter, though I stick to sugar-free bubble gum these days.

Since I am such an enthusiastic gum chewer it's no small wonder that in elementary school, I was required to write, 100 times, "I will not chew gum in class."

I wish that had been the only thing I was required to write 100 times. I don't remember precisely what the other infractions were, however, I do remember I had no repeat offenses. I always managed to find a new classroom sin that resulted in me putting pencil to paper in pseudo-repentance.

(I confess, I could write the first five or six sentences straight, but after that, I started working in columns of "I, I, I; will, will, will; not, not, not -- fill in the blank. Unfortunately, writing it that way apparently did not have the desired effect so if the teacher caught me, I had to start over.)

It is, I admit, a relatively obscure passage of Scripture. I know this because I completely missed it the first time I read the Bible from page one to page done in 1982 and during several subsequent studies, also spanning page one to page done. I heard it the first time just last year when Danny and I were listening to the Bible on CD and remember thinking, "I've got to remember that."

I forgot.

We're listening again this year, but with a twist, we're reading along with the narrator. Sure enough, there it was again. I exclaimed, "There it is! I've got to write that down first thing in the morning."

I didn't. But this time the passage stuck in my head and after a diligent search several weeks after hearing and reading it, I finally found it:

"When he (the king) takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left."

It's pure conjecture on my part, but I'm thinking things might have gone just a tad bit better for Israel and Judah way back when if their kings had embraced this admonition along the others in the passage found in Deuteronomy 17:14-20.

My third grade teachers instinctively knew how effective this discipline would be. The Lord knows how he made us and he knows that putting pen to paper somehow inscribes the message into our minds as if with indelible ink.

We would do well to emulate this lesson in our post-modern, hyper-political world. For instance, how much better would our leaders lead, if each one required to take the oath to uphold the constitution was also required to inscribe the words contained therein?

The Preamble alone would forever remind those who seek to lead that "We the People" indisputably establishes that this government truly is a government of the people. Abraham Lincoln no doubt had just that in mind when he intoned during his brief remarks at Gettysburg, "... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

It is impossible to gauge what a difference it would make in the Kingdom of God if the followers of Christ took pen in hand today to inscribe on paper and thereby possibly on their very hearts, in indelible ink, the teachings of our Lord. Even just the teachings found in the Sermon on Mount, in Matthew chapters five through seven, would have a life-changing, indeed, a world-changing impact.

If believers began to live Christ's teachings, heeding God's command from the cloud: "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!" from Matthew 17:5; also found in Mark 9:7 and Luke 9:35, nothing would ever be the same.

What would that change look like? How would the world's opinion of Christendom change? Would your neighbor's opinion of you and my neighbor's opinion of me change if we lived the words because the words were indelibly etched onto our very hearts?

"'Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.' When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law." Matthew 7:24-29 (NIV)

I don't have all the answers, but I know the One who does. Let's walk together for awhile and discover Him; together.

Dawn