Words.

"I still have many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them now. But when he—the Spirit of truth—comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will proclaim to you the things to come. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and will proclaim it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he takes from what is mine and will proclaim it to you."  John 16

Context can be everything.  If your wife gave you a grocery list of items to get on your way home from work.  You would read it only as a list of things to get.  A duty.  Perhaps even a despised one.  Maybe you hate the grocery store.  Maybe you're tired and just want to go home.  Maybe you don't really like the vegetable-to-red-meat ratio of the list.  Maybe you don't mind but even so, it's just a list.  You probably crumple it up and throw it away when you're done with it.

But what if she died that day?  What if that note became the last thing you ever got from her?  Would you fish it out of the trash?  Would you pore over it in the days to come just to see her handwriting?  Would you savor every loop?  The way she misspelled 'brocolli'?  Did she put a little heart on it?  Write, 'thanks!' at the bottom?  

A love letter from your spouse is a precious thing.  When you are with your spouse every day you may take it for granted.  Put it in a drawer intending to do something with it later.  Pin it up in the cubicle where it becomes background to your day in the life but not vital to it.  Wallpaper.  But to a soldier far from home who hasn't seen their loved ones in months, it is life!  It is carried about in the breast pocket.  Pulled out at every opportunity.  Pored over for every detail, read and re-read.  An agonizing reminder of the world where they belong.  A reminder of something better somewhere.  A reminder that someone loves them.  Cares what happens to them.  It becomes their reason for living!  For surviving.  For being something the writer of the love letter can be proud of.

The Bible is a lot of things.  Poetry.  Story.  Wisdom literature.  Prophecy.  Commandments and guidebook.  But in one very real sense, it is a love letter to us.  It is God inviting us to know Him.  To know what He's done for us.  To let him remind us of who we are to Him.  How we feel about Him, about ourselves and our situation, colors how we read it.  It can be just words on a page... a grocery list.... wallpaper.

Or it can be life.