One of the most formative habits of my life has been that of daily Bible reading. Whether the motivating force on any given day is desperation, duty, or delight, I truly believe that those who seek the Lord in His Word will find Him; I’ve experienced that over and over again in my own life. It does seem sometimes like a search for buried treasure; some of the most precious nuggets of truth have been found in the places I least expected them.
One of these unexpected little nuggets is a phrase from Joel 2:13: “….rend your hearts and not your garments.” The Lord is always more concerned with the true attitudes of our hearts than our outward displays of conviction; He is not taken in when we merely put on the socially accepted public signs of repentance. This isn’t the only place we see this focus on the inward life instead of the outer (see 1 Samuel 16, Psalm 50, Matthew 6, Amos 5, Isaiah 1 for a few other examples), but it is one of the more succinct.
May its pithiness remain with you as it has with me, whether to convict or to comfort.