Once again, my spiritual inspiration has come from my two year old. I know it's cliche, but while you teach your kids, you learn from them, too.
I taught M the song "Jesus Loves Me" because it's my nephew's favorite, and those two are best buddies. She had me sing it over and over (seriously, it could have gone on for an hour if I hadn't stopped so she could go to sleep), and every time I ended the song, she'd say "More Jesus!"
That in and of itself is fairly instructive. She may not mean it that way because she's not old enough to understand His sacrifice and His place in our lives, but I know I at least could use more Jesus. I pretty much am a toddler in terms of my spiritual journey. But the bigger inspiration I gained was this - she had heard me sing the song over and over and over, and she still wanted to hear it again. She was delighted each time, and even began chiming in with that adorable, toneless, every-other-word singing only a toddler can pull off.
And that joy, I think, is something that we start to lose if we're not careful. When I was planning my wedding, I heartily insisted that 1 Corinthians stay completely out of the ceremony, opining that if I had to hear that trite "love is patient, love is kind" spiel again, I might throw up. I had heard it so many times that I had let it lose its meaning. It wasn't the word of God to me. It was blah blah, yadda yadda, love nonsense.
I think to some degree, many of us have this happen to us. We hear a verse that we've heard a million times before, and we start to zone out. We know it, we get it. We're sick of it. In the same way that we won't laugh at a joke we've heard a dozen times, we don't rejoice in the verses we've heard a dozen times. We keep the sounds and letters, and we lose the meaning behind them.
So I read 1 Corinthians again. And instead of reading it like someone who is sick of it, I read it as someone who wants to learn, and to understand. And I didn't hate it. I still likely wouldn't use it in my wedding if I got married today instead of 4 years ago, but it's not just trite to me anymore.
I challenge you to do the same. Find a verse that's lost its luster for you, and read it with new eyes. With an open heart. It's like watching a well-loved movie for the tenth time - there's always something you never noticed before, and it can change the whole picture.
