In Deuteronomy 32:2, the Word of God is likened to dew. Dew, in the Bible,is a figure of God's blessing. When God blessed Israel, He gave them the dew and the rain. When Israel sinned God withheld them, as He did in1 Kings 17:1. This symbol teaches therefore that God's blessing comes through His Word upon all who receive and obey it. Proverbs 10:22 declares that blessing can enrich us, making up for all our shortcomings. What an encouragement that is! More than one instance in the gospels serves to illustrate this. One day the disciples of Jesus were confronted with the task of feeding over 5000 people and all the food they could amass was five loaves and two fishes, the gift of a boy. They protested that it was totally insufficient, as indeed it was. But then the Lord blessed that food. As a result, all the people were satisfied and a large amount remained over. On another occasion we find the disciples toiled all night at fishing, and caught nothing. Then in the morning they heard Jesus speaking to them. They obeyed His instructions, and within a few moments the net was full of fishes. These are two illustrations of the fact that the blessing of the Lord does indeed make rich. The blessing that comes to us through His Word makes up for all our lack. You may be lacking in talents and unable to preach or sing or pray like others, but when the dew of heaven falls on your life, notwithstanding all your natural limitations, God can still make you a channel of blessing to thousands. So, wait upon the Lord daily with His Word in front of you. Do nor rush away from His presence until His dew falls upon your soul.

But dew is more than blessing. It is also a symbol of freshness. Here is another thing that the Bible gives us, namely, renewal. Listening to the voice of the Lord day by day keeps our Christian life continually fresh. It saves us from becoming stale, with all that implies of corruption and decay. Mouldy bread will not make anyone's mouth water. Even so, the staleness displayed by many believers cannot be expected to draw anyone to Christ. Is your Christian life fresh every day? It can be so only if you feed daily upon the heavenly manna from beneath the dew fall (Exod. 16:13-15; compare verse 20).

In Psalm 119:103. the Word of God is also likened to food. The same symbol occurs again in Jeremiah 15:16 and in1 Peter 2:2. The prophet Ezekiel and the apostle John are each shown too in Scripture as "eating" a book (Ezek. 3:1-3; Rev.10:9, 10). We have here a picture of men assimilating and digesting the Word of God. Food gives us strength. Our bodies cannot be built up without it. A person who is under- nourished will be skinny and weak in his constitution, and therefore unable to resist disease. He will also be unable to defend himself if physically assaulted by another. A small push will often be enough to knock him down. In exactly the same way, one who neglects the Word of God will be spiritually under-developed, and consequently unable to resist temptation and to withstand the Devil's onslaughts. Only those who regularly meditate on God's Word grow into strong virile Christians (1 John 2:14). Mere reading of the Bible will not make you strong, but meditation upon it allows the Word to penetrate into the very core of your being and thus to become a part of you, hidden in your heart (Psa.119:11).

Job said that he esteemed the words of God's mouth more even than his necessary daily food (Job 23:12). By listening to God daily he built up a tremendous reserve of spiritual strength. This, no doubt, accounts for the man's remarkable resilience in the face of Satan's fierce assaults. He did not lose his faith in God, in spite of all the adversity he faced. His wife, who obviously did not have the same regard for God's Word as her husband, was ready to curse God as soon as calamity struck. Not so Job. His example gives us an idea of the tremendous strength that God's Word, if received daily, can give us to face every trial in life.