Omit Nothing!
Meditate
on the Word of God daily and studying all the tenets of our faith regularly so
that we may put into practice in our lives all that we believe, and omit
nothing.
The Bible is by all
accounts a big book - even many people who have discovered the treasure of
Scripture have yet to read the entire Bible cover to cover. So it's natural for
people to be more familiar with some passages, and basically ignorant of
others. And indeed, some books of the Bible are objectively more important than
others, e.g., the lengthy book of Jeremiah is more significant on all counts
than the pithy 21 verses of the prophet Obadiah (the only book of the Bible
that appears no where in the lectionary cycle!).
Yet the overwhelming nature
of the Bible does not give a person license to pick and choose, to focus
exclusively, for example, on only the comforting verses which assure us of
God's forgiveness, while ignoring the lofty but demanding moral exhortations
and precepts! While this is especially tempting for those charged with
preaching God's word to pass over the most unsettling "hard sayings"
in Scripture so as not to irk listeners, God's insistence that his prophet
Jeremiah "omit nothing" applies as well to all of us who hear or read
His word today.
Most people are
woefully ignorant of too many essentials found in the deposit of our faith
because God's demand that we "omit nothing" has conveniently been
ignored. We simply cannot be God's faithful people without a lifelong commitment
to accept the whole of His revelation - living this commitment in practice
means meditating on the Word of God daily and studying all the tenets of our
faith regularly so that we may put into practice in our lives all that we
believe, and omit nothing!