In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)I finished my yearly reading of the Bible yesterday as I have done for several years now. Today I begin again.
This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham: (Matthew 1:1)
Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. (Psalm 1:1)
These are the proverbs of Solomon, David’s son, king of Israel. (Proverbs 1:1)
It is an interesting thing, reading the Bible over and over in such a structured way. In some ways it has a negative side. You read snippets without reading in context.
Sometimes, the action stops in the middle because you have read the required amount. Sometimes a psalm is divided in what seems to be an odd way. Some days, like today in Matthew, will be mostly names of people who had kids.
But even so, the year I didn’t do it, I felt I had missed out on something that I needed. So I went back to it and have done it for several times now.
Each time I read, I get a new insight, something I have not seen before. It is amazing that I can read something year after year and still get fresh insights in it.
But then again, we are dealing with the written word of God, a literary view into the mind of God. How can we possibly plumb the depths.
A mother told me once that her son was tired of coming to church. After all, he knew all the stories. My thought was that if knowing all the stories constituted knowledge of God, many atheists I have known that had read the Bible would go to heaven. They knew the stories because they read them to try to tear God down.
Of course, they didn’t know the God behind the stories. So they didn’t really understand them. I knew the stories, having grown up in the church. But I have to admit that I really didn’t find God until I was in my 20’s. I knew them enough that I was great on Bible quiz teams. Since I always collect trivia, that fit right in.
However, God is not a God of trivial knowledge. He is a God of divine knowledge and wisdom. And you cannot get those unless you know the God behind the Bible.
Read it all you want, but until you know him, it is Shakespeare or the Iliad or Canterbury Tales., eminently quotable. But it has about as much relevance to your life as those books do if you do not know the God behind it.
So I read every year and I try my best to understand and ask God for wisdom and understanding.
May he bless me with greater understanding this year.
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