“Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” (BCP, p.236) Today’s collect speaks to me in many ways. I’ll share a few of them to get you started on thinking about what it says to you. To begin with, I never read or hear it without remembering a woman, who was in a Bible study group that I was leading on the gospel of Mark some years ago, being surprised to discover the comma between “read” and “mark.” Apparently when using the collect to open the sessions, I had read too fast and what she had heard was the injunction to “read Mark.” That serves as a reminder to me to slow down when I approach scripture so that I can hear the message it has for me today. If I’m in a rush to get through or just going through the motions, I’ll miss it entirely. “Mark” also gets my attention because I always read with a highlighter or pen of some kind in my hand so that I can mark words or phrases, sentences or paragraphs that speak to me in some way, something new, something important, something well said, something that resonates in my heart. I know, of course, that “mark” in the collect doesn’t refer to my marking on the pages of scripture (something that, at one time, I would have considered sacrilegious) but to paying attention to, observing, heeding the word of God in my life But it is the “inwardly digest” phrase that really touches me. It is a call to make scripture part of me, of who I am, body, mind, and spirit. In lectio divina (divine/holy reading), an ancient and always relevant way of meditating on scripture, the picture of a cow chewing its cud or a person sucking on a piece of hard candy until it dissolves completely in the mouth is used to illustrate the idea of inwardly digesting the word of the Lord. For me, however, the image of inwardly digesting is being at the altar, receiving the body and blood of the Word of God, taking it into my body, letting it nurture and transform me however I may need. I could go on and on, but the question is, “What speaks to you?”