Patiently Reading the Bible

Sometime as we read our Bibles we can bring our culture’s attitude of wanting things quick and easy. This manifest’s itself in different ways. First, we can start a Bible reading plan and soon enough it can become systematic. Although it is sometimes beneficial just to read quickly through the text we live in a world quite removed from the biblical authors and it can take time to place ourselves into the world they were writing in. Second, when we do finally get to the point where we are struggling with the text we can settle for easy answers. We can rush around trying to find immediate solutions to our problems; all the while forgetting that we need the Holy Spirit’s guidance if we are going to get to the true meaning of Scripture. In my own life, if I run into a difficult portion of Scripture I can actually lose sleep over it. My mind goes back and forth wondering which reading is correct; I even get anxious.

The Bible is a great book. There are simple truths that children can easily understand and yet the books that have been written to explain the Bible are too numerous to count. We need to keep this in mind as we come to the Scriptures. We need to be humble, recognizing that we are going to die, we will never exhaust the truth that can be found in this book, and we are not called to know ‘everything’. As long as we are human we will ‘know some’ but will never ‘know all’. We need to approach the word of God with patience.