While traveling on the ocean liner Vistafjord, Eleanor Sass and several other passengers were invited by the captain to visit the ship's bridge. There the engineer explained the workings of the intricate equipment, such as the compass and radar.

But what impressed many of the passengers most was all the brass, which gleamed like gold. "How often do you polish all this?" one man asked an officer. "Every day," was the reply. "For the minute you stop polishing it, the brass starts to tarnish."

That reply made Eleanor think about something she had stopped doing—reading God's Word every night. She recognized that her neglect of the Word of God was causing her life to be "tarnished." So, at bedtime that night she took out the Bible she had seen earlier in the dresser drawer. She began again to turn to God in His Word.

Have you been reading the Bible, or have you been neglecting that discipline? Psalm 119 encourages us to seek the Lord with our whole heart, to delight in His statutes, and not to forget His Word (vv.10,16).

If your relationship with God has lost its spiritual luster, it needs to be polished by the faithful habit of daily Scripture reading.  — Vernon C. Grounds