DO YOU HAVE A BIBLE? HAVE YOU EVER READ IT?

As strange as this may sound, I believe many possessors of Bibles don't read them. Furthermore, they don't know how.

Stranger yet, I don't blame them.

I didn't care much for church as a kid.  I tried.  I surely wanted one of those attendance pins that some of the other kids got.  But there was a definite catch.  I had to attend so many Sundays in a row to get one.  Never did I get a pin.

I had a Bible or two by the time I was in High School.  It didn't mean much to me. The kiddie stories were fun; Jonah and the Whale, Jesus walking on water, etc.  I thought they were fun to hear about.  But, I didn't really read my Bible.

When in college it seemed important that I know God.  I would sit in my one-room apartment and try to read it.  Beginning each time at Genesis 1:1, I would read maybe three verses a night.  That's not really helpful.  Months later I would restart my study...at Genesis 1:1.

A few years later I began to study more seriously.  Reading the Gospels and the New Testament seemed to very slowly and tediously grip my heartstrings.  Yet, what I want you to get it was not easy.  From then until now I feel that if I learned one tidbit of God, I stepped backward because He is so immeasurable in size.

Oddly, that is the way it should be.  Those who have taken on the Word with plans of cornering its market on truthful information will always be proven to be losing ground.  It isn't just that the human mind can't take it all in; but it also insists that the Living God will not be totally understood and filed as if we have wrapped up knowing all about God.  He will always enlarge at a more rapid rate than the information about Him we gather.  He is God.

If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to read it.  When you look at Matthew, for instance, try not to just note rows of words.  Try to notice Jesus as a person; how he seemed relaxed, how he noticed the rejected ones, and how he didn't walk in fear.  Let the Bible speak to you.

I've been at this awhile.  I can tell you that God is faithful and honest.  His Word is so eternal it keeps producing as an oil well.  Huge sprays of wonder splash upon us as we continue to discover this very thin volume cannot be limited nor contained.  It very much lives.

Be encouraged to read your Bibles.  See what He says that you just never realized.  Be very patient with yourself and with others who read theirs.  We won't always agree. We will always learn.  And, we will be very blessed.  It is stunning to realize that one of the greatest gifts in our homes have yet to be truly opened.

If you have a Bible, try to read it.