What is it worth to you?

What is it worth to you?

I hear that question often. When I go to sales in search of antiques large and small, the final price always boils down to what something is worth to me. I must do some fast thinking and possibly negotiation, to make sure I can purchase each item for an amount that will allow room for me to realize a profit.  

Needless to say, on a buying trip there may be many things which excite me. I have specific items I look for because these items have been profitable purchases for me in the past.  People often ask me how I know what to buy, and my reply is simple.  I buy things that excite me or things that appeal to me and hopefully they will excite my customers, too. 

When I was very young, I was excited by other things.  Give me a toy truck and I could be entertained for hours. I even remember when our toys for outside consisted of an old table spoon and a handful of thread spools and we would go outside and dig roads in the dirt with the spoon, and run our spool-cars on the dirt roads we had made.  It might be difficult for today's kids to understand, but that was fun!

Last week in our studies, we looked at a section of Psalm 119. Yes, it's a very long chapter to read, but take it a few sections at a time and look at the rich language of these Bible verses. My reading of the chapter during this past weekend brought me to see a certain theme repeated over and over.  There's probably similar repetition of other themes that you could see in reading the chapter, but the one which stood out to me was the psalmist mentioning numerous times his "delight" in the word of God. 

Coming from a family with a rich church heritage, being related to several preachers, and never too far away from a good Bible story, you would think I could fully understand how someone could be so excited by the scriptures and expressing that God's word was his delight.  Here's a couple of the verses for your consideration.

  "for I delight in your commands because I love them."  verse 47

 "Your statutes are my delight; they are my counselors."  verse 24

If I counted correctly the psalmist used that word, delight, a total of seven times. That lets us know God's word is of great importance and obviously a priority in the life of the one who wrote them.  It further causes me to think of the Christians I know personally, and how easily it is to detect when a person delights in the word. 

While I am still one to get excited and delight over finding an old tackle box full of antique fishing lures, or an old Coca-Cola sign, I want to find delight in the truths I read in scripture. It's certainly the source of the best direction for our lives, and remains applicable to all generations. Remember my repeated phrase, "Stay close to the word."  And one more from Psalm 119, "I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word." verse 16. What is it worth to you?

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