Reading the Bible

 

A couple years ago I decided to read the Bible, and I’m not even sure it was a decision I made, but suddenly it became an imperative to do so. Did the desire come from my fall down the stairs and the pain and breathlessness I endured for over a year? Was it discovering Little Season Eschatology and trying to verify if it was possible or not? I’m not sure, but I set out to read it cover to cover. Some might say that I cheated because I listened to an audio version while reading along with one of my son’s Bibles. I did as I had been instructed in my youth, start at the New Testament and then read Genesis, and thus I did. It wasn’t my first read through of those books, and I was familiar with the stories, but this time I didn’t stop with Genesis, and continued through the rest of the Old Testament. I spent a couple hours a day listening and reading along, and then played the audio version in the background as I did my daily chores.

 

Reading the Bible that way you can get through it in a couple months, and when I got to Revelation, I started over again, and then again. My husband questioned the sudden shift in my behavior with a raised brow. “I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “I may be dying,” I laughed, half serious because I really didn’t know. All I knew for sure was that it was mightily important to know exactly what it said, to see it with my own eyes, and hear it with my own ears. After going through the Bible a couple times, I went on to read and listen to the Apocrypha, the books that used to be in the earliest Bibles between the Old and New Testaments, and are still in the Ethiopian Bible. Once I was done with that I went back to Genesis and started over again, and began getting to know the people and understanding their struggles. By this time my husband was interested, so I pulled another Bible off the shelf, also my son’s, and gave it to him. Now we listen and read along together every evening, Genesis to Revelation, and then over again.

 

Certain things become clear when you sink down into it that way, the first being that humanity hasn’t changed at all, we’re still the same as the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. Some are strong and sure and nothing can alter their faith, others are wishy-washy following only the desire of their own hearts and pledging allegiance to whomever gives them what they want and promises their safety, and some are downright rebellious shunning God at every turn. And clearly God’s patience with us hasn’t altered either as we’re still here, forever going down the wrong roads and worshipping anything but Him. It is said God never changes and is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and there’s peace and security in that, but also fear. Reading the Bible we can see that although God has incredible patience, and forgives us if we’re honest and true, He can also end us easily and make us suffer if we attempt to claim His glory as our own doing.

 

It’s said the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and it seems modern churches want to soften what that means. The truth is everything exists because of God, and what He gives He can easily take away. If our heart is true and focused on Him we have little to worry about, but if we attempt to lie and manipulate Him, or others, He sees through the deceptions humans don’t, and will give enough rope to let us have our own way for a while. God chastises His children when we’re off the path, He wounds to awaken us, and the closer we get to Him the stronger His correction can become. He loves us, and doesn’t want to lose any of us, but the choice is ours and He will let us make our own mistakes, and allow us to suffer the consequences of our transgressions.

 

He forgives ignorance (thank the good Lord!) but is not so quick to forgive rebellion. If we know the way to go, the things to do to follow Him, and don’t do those things He can and will yank us back, and that yank is not often pleasant. He understands our emotions because He created them, and understands the overwhelming confusion and chaos this world dishes out. He is patient and kind, but will also give a firm rebuke. He is closer than we can imagine, and knows what we do behind closed doors and what we think inside of ourselves, and understands the struggles we encounter down here.

 

Jesus said if we love Him we will keep His commandments, but the world says that’s not really important and breaks them daily in the living color and moving pictures of our entertainment. Jesus said the most important commandments are to love God and love our neighbor, and modern churches say we don’t need to bother with the rest. But the stone tablets Moses carried down the mountain explain exactly how we are to do those things. God gave us instructions and those instructions clarify how He expects to be loved. We love Him by not placing other gods before Him, or making idols, or using His name in vain, and by honoring the Sabbath that He made for us. To love our neighbor means to honor our parents, and not murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, or covet our neighbor’s belongings. Simple really, but the world tends to make the simplest things hard to understand, and somehow we think mental love with no action is what He expects. We seem to think we just need to offer a quick prayer and we’re good to go, but we each know if all we received in a friendship or romantic relationship was words without actions we wouldn’t be satisfied, yet somehow we expect God to accept our lack of action and follow through.

 

The pattern is always the same, God blesses His people, explains the rules, and they thrive, but then they turn away from Him and do their own thing and conform to the world. The world breaks His laws, and His people go right along with it, and then destruction or sickness or famine or captivity occurs, and suffering ensues. The remnant turn back to Him during the following struggle, pleading, crying, begging, and promising, and He saves them and blesses them again, and the cycle continues. Over and over, we turn away, we get cocky and caught up in our own self-importance, and begin to break the rules. The same story repeats throughout the generations and thousands of years of history, it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, and it seems like we’re there again.

 

We embrace the world that He hates, and many teach their kids there is no God, and most turn to the soothsayers in white coats and business suits to tell their futures. Breaking His commandments is just happenstance as we emulate what we see on our screens and backstab and gossip our way to the top or to whatever we desire. All’s fair in love and war, we say, and sit on a pew on Sunday and know that we are safe and heaven bound because we still say our prayers. It doesn’t work that way, God does forgive if we’re honest and true, and God forgives ignorance, but God rarely forgives rebellion, and never without punishment, and I suspect we’re at the punishment stage again.

 

I’ve spent over twenty years saying I’m not a prophet, but maybe I was wrong. If a prophet is someone who reads the Bible and relays what it says, then maybe I am just one of many of God’s prophets in these days. It’s strange how when we read the Bible the Lord begins to talk to us in Bible verses, a random number of a book and passage will pop in our mind, or come in a dream, and of course we rush to look it up. Over and over again when this has happened it usually led me to the prophets, and to various verses where God instructed the prophet to write things down, and after more than a few times I finally got the message. Yes, it took too many times for the message to get through, and I lament over my denseness, fear, and rebellion.

 

You see, I don’t want to be crazy saying God said this or God said that, and apparently I still care what the world thinks of me to a degree, and I surely don’t want to be a false prophet because the fear of God is strong in me. False prophets usually proclaimed that peace was at hand, and used their words to appease the various kings and queens they worked with, while God’s prophets were hated and suffered to relay His words. I’m no stranger to being hated, mocked, and gossiped about, and I’m surely not claiming that God is sending peace. Now that I’m familiar with scripture I’m beginning to understand God’s nature, or at least as much as humans can understand His nature. He’s consistent throughout the Bible; He gives great blessings to the people and nations who turn to Him, and He eventually loses patience with those who turn to other gods, hurt children, and pervert His laws. And when He runs out of patience destruction in one form or another rains down, from the ground opening, to fire from the sky, to pestilence and famine to bitter waters to sending avenging angels or evil spirits, something awful always happens.

 

We’re at an odd time in our history, and destruction has rained down on the earth many, many times because we’re a hardheaded, stiff-necked lot, and we trust a world that always leads us to great confusion. These days it’s very loud down here, and made deliberately so to drown out His voice. We’re distracted on every level, irradiated, our molecules vibrated by dirty tech, and our bodies struggle to relax. He knows this, and just like every time before He’s heard the cry of His remnant and is preparing to do what He has always done - there is nothing new under the sun.

 

Sometimes life completes strange circles, where coincidence, synchronicity, and seasons collide, and as I sit here writing this on the anniversary of my son’s death, I feel as though I’ve completed some unseen and unexpected circle in my life. When I needed a Bible I had a couple on the shelf, they were my son’s, each inscribed to him by different people, and I’d been carrying them, moving place to place, since his death. I’m not exactly sure what that means in the big scheme of my life, but it certainly feels like God had a hand in it, and that hand is leading me in a direction I had never considered.

 

Keep seeking God, He’s listening, and the time of change is drawing near.