I heard a sermon about reading scripture a while ago.  It wasn’t condemnational, but inspirational, which is rather surprising considering how much I (we?) tend to fail at it.  But the perspective was not to  view it as failures, but infinite opportunities to pick it up again, infinite times to be the lost coin found again by a desperate lover.  And it pointed out that there was no implicit need to have an in-depth bible study every time the book was opened.  Why must every scripture be tiresomely strangled of a meaning or application to fit into our lives.  That’s what I’d tried in the past, and I can vouch that  it’s exhausting.  What does the number of men in the tribe of Benjamin versus those from Judah teach me?  Still don’t know, but I know they’re different numbers now.

Apparently, it takes about 3 months to read the bible cover to cover, if you read at a slow pace, for 30 min every day. I don’t remember when I started, but I’m in Numbers so far, and even enjoyed Leviticus until the very end.  After hearing the 3rd repetition of sacrificial  requirements, it’s easy to go glossy-eyed.  But I would just sit down, set a 30min timer and read like it was a novel, not a textbook.  Isn’t it?  The Word of God is not the Bible, I’ve been told.  Doesn’t that sound blasphemous.  But the book itself says so.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word of God is a living, perfect being who inspired many faithful men to write down some of the things He wanted us to know.  But the book was made for us to find Him, to see his love, to understand the graciousness of a Just God who pulled those whiny captives out of Egypt, cast plagues when they turned against Him, but repeatedly, time and time again, accepted them back because He just couldn’t stay away.  He loved them more than they deserved, He provided ways for them to understand their depravity and learn to trust and follow Himself all the better.  He kept track of just how many were in that massive traveling nation that walked into the land He set up for them.  He goes against my logic and communicates with a spiritual diviner of the enemy who ends up blessing Israel 3 times after trying to curse them.  The God I thought I knew wouldn’t go that far.  He wouldn’t lower himself to speak with a pagan spiritualist who was trying to invoke Him to destroy Israel.  Seriously, this story’s got some juiciness… And I am hopelessly in love with it, sappy romance novel that it is.  Still surprises me that it’s nonfiction too.

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