You Gotta Get Up! — Donna Evans

"How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth.”
Psalm 119:103 (NIV)

One of the great joys of my retirement is being available to teach a weekly women’s Bible study and mentor some younger women. Truth be told, I usually learn much more from them than they do from me.

Several years ago, one young mom named Laura taught me an important spiritual principle by sharing a humorous story from her honeymoon. She and her new husband had booked a "semi-inclusive" resort travel package. Instead of everything being paid for in full, Laura and Bill had credits from which they could choose. One of their credits was for a continental breakfast. The young couple were both breakfast lovers and decided on the front end of their stay to bypass the continental breakfast and splurge for daily room service. For $14 each, Laura and Bill enjoyed an omelet, some fruit, a muffin and a small glass of orange juice delivered to their room. Each morning Laura and her new husband went to the lanai, ate their room-service breakfast, and talked about what a good choice they had made.

On their last day in Bermuda, the newlyweds decided to just go downstairs for the continental breakfast and skip their little private treat. Arriving in the resort dining room, they were astonished to see tables beautifully set with white linen tablecloths and crisp linen napkins. Soft jazz played in the background. The butter was carefully molded into little rosettes. There was a four-foot ice sculpture in the middle of an eight-foot round table filled with fruit. Hotel wait staff manned a beef carving station. The so called “continental breakfast” turned out to be a rich and sumptuous feast. Laura and Bill missed it for the first six days of their trip because they didn't get up and go.

Laura often used her humorous honeymoon story to illustrate an important spiritual principle. God's Word is always good. Sometimes we can flip a calendar and read a verse or read a short devotional and get something good out of it. There's nothing wrong with that, but if that's ALL we do with God's Word, we are likely settling for a $14 omelet and missing the full feast.

Sharing her story with some other young moms, Laura said, "There is so much more waiting for us. A table has been prepared just for us. But we have to get up. We've got to make the effort to walk to it. And when we do, we'll find the sweet music of Jesus playing in the background. Staples will have been formed into little rosettes just for us. There will be the choicest meat to truly sustain us. There are even things of beauty in the middle of the sweet nourishment, just for us. But we've got to get up.”

Laura certainly understood the necessity and priority of God’s Word. She died in 2012 following a long battle with breast cancer. By her faith, however, she still speaks (Hebrews 11:4).
The late October mornings are now darker and colder when my alarm goes off. Every ounce of my being wants to roll over, stay in bed, wrap the covers tighter around me and go back to sleep. Then I remember Laura’s challenging words: "You gotta get up!

By God’s grace and from His Word, there are new morning mercies each day (Lamentations 3:22-23), a rich feast prepared just for us.

"When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart's delight, for I bear Your name." Jeremiah 15:16 (NIV)