An Old Memory

I did not exactly find it.  I knew where it was and was really looking elsewhere, but somehow it seemed to find me.  I knew I wanted to be in the book of Psalms because there is always a word of comfort and strength found in those pages and I was consciously looking for something other than the 23rd Psalm.  It is not like I have something against that passage of Scripture.  I just already knew what it said and felt a need for something new and different.  And, then, all of a sudden there it was, staring at me from the open page in my hands.    

The 23rd Psalm is the first Scripture I memorized.  Even before I have memory, I seemed to have known those verses.  My mother is surely the one responsible.  What I learned came not from some new version of the Word, but the King James Version full of all those awkward "Thou's" and verb structures that are no longer used.   Even today and tonight as I saw it again, the Words came back not like they were written in the more modern translation, but the old fashioned way I learned them.  

And what I discovered in those moments with this most familiar Word was a new Word that I had not been privy to hear all those other times.  The Holy Spirit is not only an amazing source of inspiration for those who wrote the Scripture, but an equally amazing source of inspiration for those who come to its pages in need of a Word from God.  He never seems to disappoint.  Not even on a night like this night when the heart was quietly and hopefully searching did He disappoint.  I am grateful for that very old Word my mother put in my memory and grateful it showed up again tonight.