= La Sagrada Escritura I came to do my devotional Bible reading thing this morning, for the first time in a couple of weeks (oops!) - so I'm still in the Psalms - and as I read through the passage (Psalm 119.89-101, 105) and the devotional content, I had a vague feeling that I'd read this before! When I turned to my notebook to jot down some of my ideas, I found that I hadn't actually moved my bookmark forwards when I did this page last time, so we then had "Day 92 - revisited!". And at the bottom of that page, the notebook had a little printed sentence saying, "God wants to continually add to us, to develop and enlarge us - always building on what he has already taught us and formed in us." And that sentence is certainly true for me today! Through this same passage, all that time ago, God is building on what he had previously taught me, and speaking to me in a completely different way. This is what Scripture is - the Word of God which can speak to us again and again, in so many different ways. This led me to reflect on my relationship with the Bible. And I think - if I'm honest - my relationship with Scripture has been being transformed for a while now; through studying theology and various other things, but particularly so over these last few weeks. So here are those reflections: Before university - before doing theology - the Bible was just true. I didn't have to think about in what way it was true or anything like that; it was just true! I had the faith of a child that when I read it, it was just true. And there was nothing wrong with that - IS nothing wrong with that. I still explored Scripture and still wanted to know more of God, but when I came to the Bible, I came to it as it was JUST true. Then I chose to enter this world called 'theology'! And parts of it were the same as I'd been doing anyway - living a life (trying to be!) alongside God IS doing theology! But other parts were looking at the writers of the books in the Bible - looking at their motives and audiences. Answering a question about why a certain feature of a gospel is written that way with 'because that's how God wanted it' isn't going to get you very far in a theology exam! And as I was constantly looking at this human side of the forming of the Bible, I started to come to it almost seeking for it to prove itself as relevant to me before I accepted it as "just true"! Of course, any time spent with Scripture and God did prove this to me - but it was a different relationship. But then recently, God's been making me think more about what I really think of Scripture, and reflect on whether that is good enough or not. And so many things have contributed to my new-found relationship with the Bible that I couldn't possibly note them all here, but I'll try to give an overview!
Going back to my relationship with Scripture then; I am back to immediately trusting it when I come to it again. But no longer blindly. I can now look at it and see it for what it is now - God's ever-living Word - and what it was when it was written - a whole variety of scrolls and letters written for different people and different purposes - but ALL FOR GOD! At it's heart, Scripture is God's Word and interaction with us - humans. It is a message of love and hope and redemption. And it is EXCITING! It is comforting and challenging, it is provocative and enlivening, it is beautiful and heart-wrenching - but it is ALL GOD.
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AuthorI'm a recent Cambridge Theology graduate now studying for a Masters in Biblical Studies and blogging about all sorts of things! I'm interested in faith, Church, theology, social action, the great outdoors and being creative, and all of those things - along with many more - come through in my posts!
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