Lent 2023day 38

 

You all know how I love words.  And I also love listening to the radio - mostly because radio is a great source of words.😀  So you can imagine my delight when I heard on some radio programme or other that the word 'thesaurus'  comes from a Greek word meaning 'storehouse or treasure trove.'   I almost crashed the car I was so excited!  

I hope your mind is taking you where mine took me ...... to lots of Biblical references to treasure and storehouses coupled with the notion that a thesaurus as we now know it is a treasure storehouse of words and synonyms.   I love the idea that someone once considered words to be riches.  To be currency. So valuable that they need to be protected in a big dictionary. Amen to that! 

The storehouse in the Bible has different meanings depending on the context. It can refer to a place where food, goods, or riches are kept, God's power over the natural world and His goodness, His threshing-floor where He separates the wheat from the chaff, the Temple treasury where the tithes were brought, or a minister or ministry that spreads the true gospel and prepares people for the Lord

When you look up the references, so many of them are about the weather being held in God's storehouse.  Hail and wind and lightning are unleashed when He opens the doors of His weather thesaurus.  I love the thought of God checking through an inventory of climatic variations and deciding which one to let loose - and when you think of how many different types of weather events there are, that word thesaurus really does seem fitting.   The other thing God has stored up for us is His goodness. And just as there are a hundred thousand ways to describe weather there are even more to describe His goodness.  There are dictionaries and encyclopaedias full of the kindness and grace and mercy of Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Isaiah 33: 5-6 tells us that we have access to the storehouse of God's goodness and the key to that place is 'the fear of the Lord'.  How amazing that we can gain access to the thesaurus of salvation and wisdom and knowledge.    I suppose its another way of saying that we have the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2;16)   When we adopt a position of awe and respect and reverence towards God He opens the door for us to know Him in His entirety.  Its the opposite of what happened in the Garden of Eden when Adam was told not to go near the tree of knowledge.  Now, in Jesus , we are welcomed in to the source of all wisdom and understanding to devour as much as we want.  Adam wasnt walking in the fear of the Lord, despite physically walking with Him in the garden.  Familiarity breeds contempt - maybe Adam felt He knew God so well that He could disobey Him with impunity.  Maybe he thought he was so well loved by God that he was entitled to absolutely everything.  Whatever the reason, Adam's lack of fear/awe/reverence led to his and our downfall.   Jesus has put it all right again.

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