Sweet in the mouth, hard to swallow

I took the little scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour.

— Revelation 10:10 (NIV)

Read the full text: Revelation 10

Hard times can crack open almost anything except a heart set on the wrong thing - so judgment alone was never going to be enough. What breaks through instead is a scroll John has to eat: something true about God himself, sweet in the mouth and hard to swallow, that takes time to actually digest rather than just hear.

Some truths about God are like that - easy to affirm, slow to actually change you, because agreeing with something and letting it rearrange your life are two different acts.

Most of us have a shortlist of those. That God forgives, which you would defend in an argument and cannot quite believe about the particular thing you did. That he is near the broken-hearted, which you have said to other people at funerals. That you are not the sum of what you produce, which lasts until the next week at work. None of these needs to be learned again. They need to be eaten.

The picture is a good one, because eating is slow and it is personal. Nobody can digest a truth on your behalf, and hearing it again in a sharper sermon does not speed it up. What does the work is repetition over time, and the first decision you make that only makes sense if the thing is true - the apology offered before you feel forgiven, the rest taken before the work is finished, the honest sentence said to someone who might think less of you for it.

Notice too that it is sweet and bitter, both. A truth that has genuinely gone in will comfort you and cost you in the same week. If what you are carrying is only sweet, it may not have reached your stomach yet; if it is only bitter, it may not be the message John was given to eat.

So pick one. One sentence about God you would say you believe and have not let decide anything. Carry it for seven days - written down, somewhere you will see it - and at the end of the week make one decision you would not have made without it.

Questions to reflect on

• What’s a truth about God you’d say you believe, but haven’t really let yourself digest - something you’d affirm quickly but rarely let reshape an actual decision?
• What would it look like this week to sit with that truth long enough for it to stop being just an idea?
• What has this truth already cost you, and what has it given you? If neither, has it been eaten at all?

Prayer

Lord, your truth is sweet and sometimes hard to swallow. Do not let me merely agree with what I know about you; let it change my decisions. Give me time and patience to digest your word until it shapes my life. Amen.