Monday, February 18, 2008

How to Read Bread, 1.

Wondering where to start, I began looking over my shelves... It was there I made an unsettling discovery. I had more books on Greek grammar than I did on the life of Christ.

It was incriminating to realize that He who had given so much occupied so small a shelf in my life. In the quiet courtroom of my heart, I was suddenly the defendant... The questions were indicting. What had I been doing in seminary?

Had I been learning how to live my life, or had I simply been learning how to use my gift?
What had I been pursuing those four years? A Savior, or simply a skill?

Had I been reading the Bible the way Van Gogh's sister read books, "to borrow therefrom the force to stimulate my activity"?

Had I read it, searching for principles, to make my life in some way more successful?
Had I read it, searching for promises, to make my life in some way more safe?
Had I read it, searching for proof texts, to give certainty to my own faith or make it more defensible to others?
Had I read it, searching for preaching material, because that was my job?
Had I read it, searching for power, for whatever reason?
Or had I read it, as Van Gogh had read his books, searching for the man who wrote it?

(Ken Gire, Windows of the Soul, 172-173)

I've totally been Van Gogh's sister a thousand times.

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