I’m a little weird. Maybe a lot weird, in fact.

I say this neither to boast nor to seek sympathy. Rather, I say it to save you the bother of making the observation yourself. You see, for Christmas I received a really great, captivating, I-don’t-want-to-put-it-down-even-to-eat book about—get this!—punctuation. Yes, I said punctuation. Those little dots and squiggles we refer to as apostrophes, commas, colons, semicolons, and the like.

This exhilarating book’s title—Eats, Shoots & Leaves—derives from an incorrectly punctuated description of China’s panda species. The reality is that the panda eats (verb) shoots (noun) and leaves (noun). Pandas don’t eat (verb) and then shoot (verb) and leave (verb)—which is what the sentence seems to say when one unnecessary comma gets added.

Just how much difference can a dab of punctuation make? Quite a bit, according to Lynne Truss, the author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. For example, "No dogs please" (that is, they’re never pleasing) says something altogether different from "No dogs, please" (that is, a polite request to leave your dog elsewhere).

Punctuation makes a significant difference between: "A woman, without her man, is nothing," and "A woman: without her, man is nothing." And the following set of the same words definitely don’t say the same thing: "Leonora walked on her head, a little higher than usual," and "Leonora walked on, her head a little higher than usual."

So why all the fuss about punctuation? Because it’s "a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling." The rules of punctuation aren’t there to make reading more difficult. Rather, they seek to make it less so.

Having acknowledged my weird fascination with the rules of punctuation, I’d like to introduce you to another weird guy. His name is David—as in David the Hebrew king, a man after God’s own heart.

Note what David has to say about his own unusual (weird?) area of fascination—God’s law: "Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law" (Ps. 119:18). "I delight in your law" (vs 70). "The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold" (vs 72). "Your law is my delight" (vs 77). "Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long" (vs 97). "I love your law" (vs 113).

Jesus said: "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10). And he was talking about you and me. Our lives. Through his law, God’s seeks to ensure and safeguard our full-life experience. David understood that. That’s why he was such an unapologetic nomophile—lover of the law. (If such a word doesn’t exist, it should—from the Greek nomos, law, and phileo, love).

Punctuation is "a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling." And, if I understand it correctly, God’s law is a courtesy designed to help humans avoid a lot of stumbling as we seek to revel in the full-life experience Jesus wants for each of us.

I think that explains David’s unique fascination.

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