On Reading the Bible
Each January, one of the more common resolves among Christians is to read the entire Bible in one year according to one of many available plans. Usually, it's a matter of several chapters a day, weaving between the Old and New Testaments in some manner of logic that I can't really speak to, seeing as how I've never actually completed one of those plans. But about a month ago, for reasons unknown, it struck me that I'd really never sat down and just read the whole thing like a book, front to back, all the words with no stopping.
So I started.
I haven't gone in order, choosing to get the ball rolling with many of the shorter books first, thinking if I could whet my appetite, the longer books might be easier to digest. Because my particular plan is to read this thing in about 70 days or so, a book a day. The day I read Jude will be all of ten minutes. The day I read Psalms could be an all day affair.
Now approaching the 40th book of the 66, my all out blitz of the Bible is beginning to make some large overall impressions. First, it's brilliance: it will always be the most amazing thing ever compiled, for all sorts of reasons. Frankly, I love this library of writings stretching over thousands of years. It is God's book, and the manner in which He delivers it to us tells me a lot about what He is after as He tries to explain the unexplainable--Himself.
There are sections of the Old Testament that are simply hard to swallow, not only in terms of fantastic metaphysics (the sun stopping, the earth opening to swallow a hapless family punished for the sin of the father, the dropping of eatable bread from the sky), but the ferocity of God's demand for holiness and obedience. And as I've plowed from Leviticus through Judges over the past week, I keep thinking of Jesus, and what it means that He came and replaced all this bloody business with a more perfect understanding of God, a more perfect sacrifice.
But I'm convinced there is something about our God that still asks for our holiness and obedience, even though grace has freed us from our failure to live up to such a call. The Bible is a story about God and His pursuit of Humanity, and the manner in which His children, first chosen and now free to choose, seek him and betray him in our ongoing dance of fickleness. From Moses to Joshua to Samuel, the call of the prophets rings out to choose to love and obey the Lord if you seek life.
More as I keep reading...
...as for me and my house...
9:23:46 AM
