the Unexpressed Advantage

It occurs to me that I love the scriptures. I love them, I am just not very good at studying them. For a while, I’ve wondered if my lack of desire to study signifies that I really don’t love the scriptures all that much. Tonight I was reminded that is not the case. My lack of passion for study of scripture certainly is a reflection of laziness and lack of discipline, but it is certainly not reflective of any lack of love for the scriptures.

This has been fleshed out for me during the last couple of weeks during bible study. Each week we read a certain amount of scripture aloud before studying the passage in question. The last couple of weeks we have covered very large sections of scripture in the readings, even though the passages we studied were quite small; this for the purpose of understanding the scripture in context.

As the group read the paragraphs aloud, I noticed that I was uncommonly enjoying listening to them read. When I was young, I remember being often bored while performing this very manner of practice in group bible study. Yet now that I’m not young, I’m surprised to find my ears perking up at the voices of my dear friends proclaiming God’s word aloud, if only in a small and familiar group setting. It excites me; stokes something in my heart (or my mind) to an internal passion that I sometimes forget is there.

I truly do love the word of God. I forget that sometimes, but I’m grateful that it contains the power to remind me again and again. There’s some kind of power in those words that goes beyond our understanding; as if the Holy Spirit constantly inhabits them while they are read and proclaimed by His people. Those words go deeper than the pages they are written on, and beyond the complexity of the varying translations by which they are presented. Those words have power indeed, and I ought to study them more. For what else in this world could possibly be worth studying, if not first the revelation that God laid down for his followers to live by? I urge you to agree with me on this, and if you have strayed from your own study of the scriptures, both in your personal time and in community, may you find it again. If we know these words and let them inhabit our being – and it follows that we proclaim them – how much better would be this world in which we dwell? – dan.