Just Beneath The Surface

 Carp's Daily Tidbits

"Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits." Psalm 103:2

Date: Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Today's Title: Just Beneath The Surface

Today's Scripture: Genesis 26:25 

Every morning I follow the same routine.  I get out of bed, head to the kitchen, make coffee, and scrounge through the pantry and the fridge to find something for breakfast.  No matter what I unearth to eat, I always have a banana.  Now, I know bananas are good for you but to me they are just good and that’s all the excuse I need.

Have you ever considered the banana?  They are long, slender, and change their color from green to yellow to black as they mature.  The best time to eat them, obviously, is when they are bright yellow and at the peak of their ripeness and freshness.

But in order to eat a banana and get to the succulent fruit, you must first peel it.  This does require some effort on your part but the reward is worth all the work put forth.  Can you imagine how sad life would be without banana pudding, banana bread, banana splits, banana ice cream, etc.  I could go on and on but I believe you get the picture.  The point is that unless you peel a banana, unless you get just beneath the surface of its skin, you will never know all the joy and wonder of this most noble fruit.

God’s word has a lot to say about finding treasures just below the surface.  Jesus told the parable of the pearl of great price which a man found in a field.  He used the mustard seed as the highest example of faith, which, when planted below the surface, produces the greatest of all trees. And the Old Testament as well harbors several examples of hidden treasure well within reach.  Let’s take a brief look at one of these passages.

In Genesis 26:25 we find these words, “Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the LORD. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well.”  The life of Isaac, Abraham’s promised son, is marked by his digging of wells.  Throughout the book of Genesis, you will find Isaac digging wells and opening the wells his father dug. 

For Isaac, as well as for everyone else, water is the most important sustainer of life.  Without it nothing can survive but sometimes, in order to get water, we have to dig for it.  Notice that in the above passage there are actually two wells that Isaac looks to for life.  Isaac calls on the name of the Lord and then he digs a well.

What a wonderful lesson for us today.  God’s word is a well of hope, strength, encouragement, and nourishment.  When we plum its depths, when we dig beneath the surface of its pages, and when we draw from it, we find life for our souls.  What water is to the body, God’s word is to the human soul.  Without this well, we will never know the living water that Jesus spoke of and our lives soon wither and die.

Somewhere in your home today there is at least one copy of God’s word.  It is a refreshing source of life yet we often choose not to drink from it.  We thirst and the water is within reach, just below the surface of the dust jacket, but we do not dig in. 

Today let us be like Issac. Let us call on the name of the Lord, open his word, and dig in.  The water we so long for is waiting for us.  So, what are we waiting for?