Faith Works 10-19-19

Faith Works 10-19-19

Jeff Gill

 

Reading in the early morning light

___

 

We've still got two weeks until time change and setting our clocks back an hour.

 

Getting up is now increasingly an "in the dark" sort of thing, and I have to make a confession.

 

When the sun is up earlier, I tend to be more active, more likely to get up and go and have gone before the sun is even entirely going. And that changes my routine.

 

The safer part of my confession is that I probably do more morning Bible reading in the winter months than any other time of the year. Which obviously means . . . yes, I know.

 

My prayer and devotions tend to stay fairly stable around the calendar, but just sitting and reading scripture is more likely when the mornings are both dark, and cold. So I've got a huge disincentive to go outside and move about (which creates its own challenges, health and fitness-wise), and reason to enjoy the living room lamp and a soft chair and the warmth of my home. Terrible reasons to read your Bible, but there you go.

 

As a preacher, I probably read more of the Bible in any given week, let alone year, than most people. But the parson's challenge is to actually go deep, read slowly, and dig into how the words and the Word are speaking to you. We've read some of these passages so often we could skip actually looking them up, and then . . . you see the problem. And it is a joy, in fact, to stop my assumptions and earlier expectations in their tracks, and to catch new inferences in old passages. The rags torn away from Lazarus as he leaves the tomb; the healing first aid done by the Samaritan on the road in Jesus' parable; the missteps and justifications of David in front of Nathan the prophet; Deborah sitting at peace under her tree, overlooking a valley in the land of promise.

 

Even so, the temptation is to read for use, to commit what they call in seminary "eisegesis" which is the opposite of "exegesis." Exegesis is to "draw out" from Biblical texts meaning and application, while eisegesis is to "read into" the passage what you brought to it in the first place, to insert your assumptions into the words so the Word of God becomes just the words of Jeff. Not so enduring, if you catch my drift.

 

One way to avoid that temptation? Prayer, yes; prayer first and last for a preacher. Prayer to get you opened up to the word and world of Holy Scripture and turned away from Jeff World; prayer to let God speak through passages that have been proven Godly and Godward directed over millennia; and prayer for the humility to let God speak through you in a sermon, or as the Bible says, "Lord, I am not worthy."

 

Prayer, and there are other ways and means; for many ministers, the original languages are not just a source of meaning but a process of deliberation that tends to weed out your own verbiage. You can quote the Greek and Hebrew too much as a preacher, but it's a useful exercise just to get you to slow. Down. Focus. On the words. One at a time.

 

If you aren't into languages, fear not. Centuries of good Christians couldn't even read. They let the Good Book, the library of faith gathered and sifted by the Holy Spirit over three thousand years and more, be read out loud to them in worship, and re-stated in hymns and anthems, and made visual in art and architecture. There's more than one way to read the Bible. That's why I'm comfortable with those who read on tablets and phones as much as in well-worn volumes in homey quilted carriers or sturdy leather cases. Our Bibles do tend to reflect something of ourselves, and what you carry, what you will carry around and keep close, is going to work just fine.

 

I could do a whole series of columns on translations (and think I have, actually), but the best translation is the one that keeps you reading. And my preferred version in my teen years wasn't my college Bible, and now I find myself leaning towards a couple of translations that hadn't been done back then. The point is: keep reading, and reflecting, and inviting the words to speak to you, to let the Word of God at the proper time be made manifest, to become vivid truth, in your life.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he should probably read the Bible more. So should you! Tell him what truth you've seen manifested in your life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.