On the Power of Reading the Bible

The Bible can be a scary book to read. We like to think that God is a nice and gentle concept even though God, in truth, is a unruly and untamable being who created and governs the universe. Hopefully, what we think about who God is comes close to reflecting the reality.

The Bible is also somewhat disordered. It's not a friendly children's book. It's full of archaic references to a world long forgotten from several thousand years ago. If you get adults to talk honestly about their Bible knowledge, they will be full of ignorance, too.

But it's through the Bible that God chooses to communicate with us. It's through the Bible that we learned that God invaded earth through Jesus to transform the universe. It's not as friendly as books like A Wrinkle in Time and The Chronicles of Narnia, but it tells the tale of God creating and transforming the universe into something better and more lasting than it already is. It tells us that our lives are going somewhere, and that somewhere is summed up in the life and power of Jesus.

It's amazing that the lives of a few ignorant men and women followers of Jesus managed to transform the world so much. Not just in their lifetimes, but for hundreds and thousands of years after. We even write dates with reference to Jesus. The year 2018, means 2018 (or so) years after Jesus' birth. That's pretty darned cool and powerful.

The real question is whether we will let this story impact our lives in the way that we live. Will we listen to Jesus speaking to us in our hearts in each day? Or will we turn a deaf ear to him? Will we read our Bibles and learn about what God says about humanity and the earth, or will we be fat, dumb, and happy in our ignorance? Will we do our part to transform the world through doing good? These are questions I wrestle with as an adult each day, and I encourage kids to start wrestling with them now. They make our lives become bigger and better echoes of our Creator.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Tabernacle

Image
Do you ever get side-tracked in what you do? Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, but they got side-tracked wandering in the desert on the way to the Promised Land. They ended up building something called the Tabernacle that would remind them that God was always with them each step of the way. It was designed with lots of art and gold so that the Israelites would remember how great God was. Even when they were wandering around in the wilderness, God would be with them, and they would need to take time to contemplate God in their lives. Many, many years later, the Israelites had their homeland destroyed by a way. The Babylonians invaded and destroyed their country. They had to go far away into a strange land. They remembered that God was with them then just as God was with them in the wilderness. They did not have a Tabernacle here as it was destroyed by the Babylonians. They didn't even have a place to worship. Rebuilding the Temple was just a pipe-dream to them to think about....
Read more

Doubt

Image
Do you ever doubt God exists? You can't see God, so God might not be there at all. But the story in the Bible says that God is with you each step along the way. Jesus, God the Father's Son, walked among us on earth as proof that God cares. Some think God created the world and left it alone to work on its own laws. But it takes a God to sustain the world and keep it going. The fact that the world still exists and "works" is proof that God loves us. I think God is big enough to handle our doubt. If God redeems every aspect of human experience, God redeems our doubts as well. Jesus experienced every aspect of being a human and did not sin. This means that Jesus surely had to experience doubt as well. It's not a sin to doubt God. God's big enough to handle it. In John 17, Jesus experiences agony in the Garden of Gethsemane before he is arrested to go to the cross. The Bible says that Jesus wanted the "cup" of his suffering to be taken away. Jesus ...
Read more