A hungry baby

as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. – 1 Peter 2.2-3

Peter gives us a little bit more here about the word of God. The Bible uses all kinds of illustrations for the Bible. In other places it is compared to honey, bread, water, and possibly a few other foods. Every use has a purpose in its context. 

Here Peter refers to the Bible as the ‘pure milk of the word.’ I think the reason is that he is picturing the kind of desire we should have to partake of His word. 

Here’s the picture. Think of a hungry newborn baby. Think of a really hungry newborn baby that needs to be fed. Think about that baby in the middle of the night. 

That baby wants fed and nothing is going to placate it. The baby is going to scream and holler and make it very well known that he wants his milk. Any parent, especially a mother, knows what I am talking about. 

Now, I don’t think we need to be screaming and hollering and carrying on like that, but I think it is a  picture of what real desire is like. It is a picture of how much we should desire the word of God. We too often take the Bible lightly with a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude. Few of us desire the word of God with the same intensity that the newborn baby desires their milk. 

Do we wake ravenous for our spiritual milk? Orr do we allow ourselves to get distracted in a way that no hungry baby would?