Holy Bible

When I was a kid, we handled the Bible with great reverence. It would have been unthinkable to toss a Bible into a back seat of a car, for instance. It was always placed gently and always face up.

When I went away to a Christian college, I learned a much more casual approach to the Bible. I was encouraged to mark in my Bible -- horrors! And many of the male Bible majors -- they were all male back then -- carried small testaments around in their hip pockets. Dear me.

That casual or familiar approach to Holy Scripture was good in one respect: it helped me feel that I could approach the text, debate what I found there, and apply it to daily life. The Bible took on the mantle of a textbook for my Bible classes. My relationship with the Bible became a largely intellectual one. I was challenged by -- and fascinated by -- all I could learn from its pages. I developed a love of Bible study.

As years passed, I was intrigued that there was always something new in scripture to catch my attention. I joked with my friends that 'that verse wasn't there the last time I looked!' and 'I guess that's why they call it the living word!' Ha ha. But laughing aside, I was fascinated that no matter how much I studied the Bible, I found it fresh and startlingly pertinent to my life circumstances.

And then there were those times when a verse -- that I had studied many times before -- would suddenly stand up off the page and turn from black and white to technicolor. (If this has happened to you, you know what I mean.) Suddenly the meaning would transform from two dimensional to 3-D or maybe holographic. (Side note: and when this happens, you can't tell someone else about it because they look at you like you've gone bonkers and say things like, 'yes, of course that's what it says...') This has happened to me often enough now that I recognize the work of the Spirit and take joy in the certainty that God is actively revealing something to me.

As years passed -- and life became difficult from time to time -- I discovered something else in those same pages: the intimate support provided by God's Word. In daily devotional Bible study I found the incredible comfort and amazingly personal voice of God speaking in great specificity to my struggles. I was stunned by the nearness of God, by his almost palpable presence emanating from the pages when I was so in need. No longer was my relationship with the Bible a solely intellectual one.

My experiences with the Biblical text over the years have led me back to a greater reverence for the Bible. It's so much more than just a textbook. Maybe it's like a textbook written specifically for me. Maybe it's like a guidebook that is updated every morning and continually serves up advice for my latest struggles.

It's like a hole in space/time where I can catch a glimpse of God and He can reach through to surround me with His comfort. And His correction.

The Word of God -- in all manifestations -- is an awesome gift from our Father. It really is "living and active" (Heb 4:12) and is worthy of our reverence and lifelong study.