Time With The Scriptures

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 “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…”
2 Tim 3:16

Time with the Scriptures is a ticklish dance.  We see the Bible on the shelf and imagine getting to it – or we have had moments when we read and screwed up our noses at what we thought we heard.  Sometimes we are just confounded by what we read, not knowing how to make sense of it.  Some of us have an ongoing relationship with the Scriptures, shaped over time, intentional or otherwise.  But few of us live steeped in the Scriptures regularly over large portions of our lives.

While I have been on vacation I have had the chance to be the recipient of preaching and interpreting of the word because I have been away from preaching and leading worship myself.  This allows me to be in worship where someone else leads and preaches.   It is easy to forget how important it is to have the scripture “opened” up for you.  Last Sunday (July 28) I sat in worship thinking I knew the stories and the texts and could expect what I would hear, and then… the preacher happened to say what I needed to hear!  I was reminded that I too am hungry for the Word that I also try to share with others.

This dance of ours with the Scriptures is a complex one.  Even as a long time reader of the scripture, I still find myself searching for the application that it can make in this moment of my life.  It reminds me that wherever we are in our current relationship with reading, digging into and exploring the Scriptures, the dance is going on and God is ready to step in and dance with us, even as we “read,” or simply remember a verse we read some time ago.

I believe that not all the scriptures are equal.  Some are more relevant to having life with Jesus than others, but taken together they are indispensable to living and growing in faith.  They dance in our hearts and minds as we work out who we are and where in our lives we are discovering God in the world before us.  Some Scriptures better challenge us, convict us and set us free to love and serve God.

Thank you for the ways you, as the people of God, have allowed me to learn and discover the living God among you and in the scriptures we read together and read on Sundays.  And thank you for the ways you teach me about how our lives together matter in the dance of shaping faith in our hearts.  And, I invite you to add new and deeper dance steps with the scriptures in your life journey.  There God speaks and hearts and even lives are changed.  But I have one word of advice.  Don’t read the Scriptures alone, mostly.  Read them together, read them in conversation, read them out loud.  Read them in concert with searching out what they mean for our lives.  This is the Dance in which God loves to move and breathe and speak, in us, with us and through our lives.

Here is one of my favorites: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8

and another, “Jesus began to weep.” John 11:35

Pastor Mitch