He opened the old, musty book, squinting through glasses too old for old eyes. "Some obscure volume on philosophy of religion," he mused to himself. Flipping through the yellowing pages, which nearly cracked as he touched them, he found a folded note that had been stuck between the pages.
It was dated July 12, 1949, and read,
"So many references to the Bible in so many books. Read the blasted thing for yourself some time."
The old book man took the advice from his unknown counselor, putting aside a half dozen partially-read books.
Yeah, I agree. Many things dwell richly in many of us, except the Bible.
ReplyDeleteI've been struck recently about how many Christians can quote extensive lines from Monty Python, recall exact episodes of Friends, sing along to multitudes of songs, navigate through areas of large cities from memory, give an account of the theology of John Piper, Brian McLaren, Benny Hinn, Oprah etc, etc - yet are unable to repeat more than a couple of verses of Scripture.
Our ability to memorize is not the problem.
R:
ReplyDeleteVery good, and sad, point.
Selah.
Similarly, I find that an increasing amount of contemporary evangelicals can quote certain lines of Scripture but miss the point because they did not regard the context of the passage. This, I believe is another outworking of not allowing Scripture to saturate our lives but just find and take those things which we think back-up our already held affirmations
ReplyDeletebest thing I ever heard on this was from a psych prof and pastor, who pointed out that meditating is like worry: you keep coming back to the same thing over and over, letting it fill your thoughts whenever you don't have something immediate to occupy them, until you just have to do or say something about it.
ReplyDelete