Martin Niemöller was a pastor in Nazi Germany who interned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945 for so-called activities against the state. Following his release he revealed how the Bible sustained him during those years:
What did this book mean to me during the long and weary years of solitary confinement and then for the last four years at Dachau [concentration camp]? The Word of God was simply everything to me — comfort and strength, guidance and hope, master of my days and companion of my nights, the bread which kept me from starvation and the water of life that refreshed my soul.
This is the power of the Word of God — it sustains and encourages and gives guidance and hope. If we are not transformed by this Word it is not because of the Word is inadequate; it is because we have failed to appropriate its power.
While reading for Sunday’s sermon on Psalm 119 I came across a helpful encouragement to set our minds on the Scriptures each day: Take one verse from Psalm 119 each day and use it as a meditation prior to your Bible reading and for the day; thus, in the course of one year, you will have meditated on each verse of this great psalm twice.
Were you and I to do that in 2014, no doubt we too would be able to say with the German pastor, whatever afflictions assaulted us we were not only sustained and emboldened by this Word, but that it became everything to us.
Words of Grace 