Bible Scholar {it happened on a sunday} day 24

Table of Contents from
my first Bible

I have always loved books.  That shouldn't be surprising, because someone who voluntarily blogs for six years to a minimal audience is clearly in love with the written word.  Like with all lifelong passions, I can remember when I first began to read.  I was around the age of 5, laying in bed, reading the Bible.  Specifically, the Gospel of Luke.  Shocking, isn't it, that the same person who wanted to take me to church when I was about an hour old, noticed I could read and stuck a Bible under my nose.  I think it began as my dad's goal, but became my own, to read the entire Bible by the time I graduated high school.  I spent summers skimming lists of names in Numbers and 1 and 2 Chronicles.  I giggled at the description of a woman's body in Song of Solomon.  I zipped through the 3 page epistles of the New Testament, and sighed at the never-ending book of Psalms.  I checked off the books in my Table of Contents, saving Revelation for my 18th birthday.

Just in case you're worried I missed out on my childhood, I also found Judy Blume and Anne of Green Gables and The Babysitter's Club, then later, John Irving and John Steinbeck and Zora Neale Hurston.  Unlike the fiction books I devoured, the Bible always felt stiff, boring, like an obligation.  War and Peace was more exciting, although it also had too many names to keep straight.  But once I finished the freaky book of Revelation and each book had been checked off, I wondered what I was supposed to do.

In case you missed it, go back to Week 2, when my life kind of fell apart, and you'll understand the state I was in at the age of 19 when I turned to the Bible for help.  I found a "Read the Bible in a Year" tool, and set about poring through the Scriptures of my childhood, wanting illumination, answers, anything to help me keep going.  I didn't find it.  So when I was 20, I just decided to stop trying to get anything out of the Bible, and set it aside.

Image from my Young
Discover's Bible

Even when I returned to church a few years later, the Bible was the one thing I just couldn't seem to embrace.  Other people had apparently been able to dive into it and make some sense, and I was appreciative for anyone willing to do this hard work and share the results with the rest of us.  When the winds changed direction, and I found myself in a new church, with a new group of people encouraging me and a new sense of freedom to just be myself, I could admit that I just didn't find any use for the Bible.

It happened on a Sunday morning, after a weekend away with some women from church, that we sat together in a living room and talked about what we wanted for our lives.  Some wanted more patience for children, for spouses, or more courage to be bold.  I didn't know what I wanted, but when someone else said they wanted to study the Bible regularly, I rolled my eyes and thought it was a pointless desire.  And yet, somehow, when an email went around the group suggesting a book to begin reading (1 John) and a daily study method in the tradition of Lectio Divina, I thought, why not? and started reading the Bible every day.

Something amazing happened.  I just kept reading.  For three straight years, I did not lose interest or want to bang my head against a wall when faced with an open Bible.  It was like the book suddenly came alive for me, and I was able to understand it for the first time.  I saw connections I'd never known about, I remembered what I'd read, I saw parallels from Biblical times that were still applicable today.

I loved reading my Bible so much, that I was uncharacteristically interested when a friend told me about a group called BSF (www.bsfinternational.org), women who gathered once a week to discuss Scriptures and listen to a lecture, then took home a guide to encourage reading each day until the next meeting.  I dragged two children to a church on a rainy Wednesday morning to sign up, and though I was dubious about the ladies I'd be spending time with each week, the lure for me was a chance to spend even more time in the Bible.

When I try to lay in the yard and read a book...

BSF has fed my soul and given me even more insight into the nature of God and His purposes throughout history.  But even more than that, BSF has challenged me in really good ways.  I sat down with my first group and was immediately disappointed to meet the group leader, Betty, who was 80 years old.  I have a bit of a prejudice against the elderly that I am trying to get better at, but in general, I just don't like being around old people.  It's horrible but it's true.  Give me a traumatized preschooler or a snarky 8th grader any day.  Over the course of several weeks, however, Betty won me over.  I saw her gentleness and her leadership, things I hadn't noticed while I was fixated on her white hair and fears of driving after dark.  I also grew to admire her courage, that she had volunteered to lead a group for the very first time after 8 decades of life, and it inspired me to think that I can still try new things no matter how old I get.

I like to joke that the Bible is a mysterious and complicated book, that the third time reading it is the charm, when you finally start doing what it says.  But I know that's really only true for me.  I'm so thankful to my dad for encouraging me to read it so many years ago, and to all the people since who have helped me stick with it.