I’ve written before about the blueberries at my mom’s house. My late father transplanted a few blueberry bushes from the North Georgia mountains over 30 years ago, and they’ve thrived ever since.

We get huge, tasty blueberries off these bushes nearly every summer, and other than some pruning and getting rid of briars, we haven’t done much to cultivate them. The berries we pick are better than anything you can find at a store.

Picking can be a challenge, because you can find nice blueberries around the perimeter of the bushes but digging deeper and looking harder can yield even better berries. Look up high, and you’ll find them. Reach deeper into the branches, and you’ll come across even more.

One of the things that we’ve learned over the years is that if we just pick in the obvious places, we miss some of the best blueberries (and we leave more for the birds to steal). If we go to even a small amount of extra effort, picking blueberries yields greater rewards.

Here comes the cheesy object lesson: the search for the best blueberries is like our search for truth in God’s word. We can find some incredible treasures when we dig beyond the surface.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s so much good stuff in the Bible right there on the surface. Even a quick or perfunctory reading of God’s word yields immense treasure for the reader, but going deeper and studying the Bible opens the reader up to so much more.

The longest chapter of the Bible is a love letter to God’s laws. Psalm 119 sits almost in the center of the Bible, and it consists of 176 verses that extol the virtue of knowing God’s written word. The psalmist uses a clever literary device for this psalm: breaking the whole poem down into eight-verse sections with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet as each section’s header.

The first section sets the tone for the celebration of God’s word:

Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways! You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently. Oh that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes! Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments. I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous rules. I will keep your statutes; do not utterly forsake me! Psalm 119:1-8 (ESV)

Throughout this exhaustive psalm, the author reminds his readers that studying the scriptures leads to purity, protection, and comfort from fear and anxiety. The psalmist doesn’t praise a short, surface-level study of the Bible – rather, he writes of meditating on the law day and night and storing up God’s words. Psalm 119 almost sounds nerdy because of the depth of the psalmist’s love for God’s word!

A pair of verses near the end of Psalm 119 remind us of the treasures that we can find in the Bible:

Consider how I love your precepts! Give me life according to your steadfast love. The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever. Psalm 119:159-160 (ESV)

Do you love God’s word enough to trust it like the psalmist does? I want to say that I do, but if I’m honest I can fall short too many times. I love to dig deep and grab the greatest treasures sometimes, but other times I’m content to settle for that low hanging fruit.

Let’s be more like the psalmist. Let’s love God’s word so much that we want to study it deeply, store it up, and meditate on it. Let’s dig deep to find those amazing treasures that await us.

 

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Check out the previous installments in Chris Queen’s Liberty Island writings on faith:

The Pitfalls of Emotional Christianity

My Church Heritage and How It Shaped Me

What I’ve Learned from Reading a Systematic Theology

A Faith-Drenched View of the South

Faith or Moralism?

Not My Home