For the past couple weeks, as I rolled out of bed each morning, it flickered like a dying flashlight in my mind. “You need Him, Joy. You should probably read your Bible.”
But I didn’t.
I didn’t really realize that I didn’t—but I didn’t just the same. So when I finally cracked a page on Saturday, I decided to pad my reentry with some leeway. I opened to Psalms without even chiding myself for being a Psalm-reading lightweight and not flipping to something more challenging, like Ezekiel. But then as the evening continued, I ended up flipping to Isaiah, then Matthew, and even Zechariah. I was entranced. Each page read like a love letter. Only this one was written in steel, on the shield of a warrior who was fighting for me.
I had let the tannins of the Word fade away, but all it took was a couple sentences, and here was this good God (right here!) this real God (waiting for me on my nightstand,) promising shelter, proving His power, and fighting (time after time!) for the honor of a selfish, clumsy people.
I had forgotten that my God—the writer of not only this masterpiece, but the author of humankind—uses His words to show me Himself. And I had forgotten how absolutely happy I am to be His.

“But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit… [But] this is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will save my people… they will be my people and I will be faithful and righteous to them as their God.” – Zechariah 7:11-8:8