Canter Bridge

The interaction of the Christian believer with Scripture evolves as she makes her way though the journey of life. At least it should. Seasons of life come and go. Each has its own rhythm of opportunity and requirement. Each shapes life’s disciplines into a momentary form. Stagnation and abandonment are, perhaps, the principal enemies. Change is a given, not an adversary.

Yet life with Christ seems to require a substantial, ongoing conversation with Scripture. It is almost inconceivable that what Paul calls ‘the mind of Christ’ should adequately saturate one’s own life without this.

In my youth, I memorized large tracts of Scripture. This is what I needed then. Though I have not pursued this particular discipline for decades, those half-forgotten, half-recallable words regularly bubble up into consciousness at appropriate intervals. They form a reservoir of strength from which I, in my weakness, draw with satisfaction and profit.

Some years ago I began to use a Christian organization’s monthly devotional guide in order to read through the Bible each year. Though I eventually grew weary of this publication’s narrow doctrinal concerns, I continued to subscribe in order to reap the benefit of the ‘read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year’ guide that was part of each day’s devotional offering. In fact, I maintained two subscriptions, one delivered to my home and the other to my office. As the habit of an annual full-Bible reading cycle took root in my practice of life, I grew to feel naked and vulnerable on those occasions when travel or a postal delay removed this reading guide from arm’s length.

Recently I discovered The One Year Bible Online and have converted from my paper subscription to this ever-ready on-line guide, now conveniently bookmarked in my web browser. Not only is this tool logistically superior to my former practice, but it also breaks the readings into a system that serves my needs more adequately. One reads a swath of Old Testament and a smaller New Testament passage, then a daily reading from the Psalms and a short passage from the Proverbs. I find this way of approaching the wisdom of Psalms and Proverbs preferable to reading through them extensively and in whole at the specific point in the year when a systematic read-through brings them up.

This is what I need now.

Yet my main point is not to suggest this or that way of maintaining daily contact with Scripture. It is rather to reflect on a matter where Scripture, the Christian lectionary tradition, and my own pilgrimage seem emphatically to agree: one must engage the conversation.

I believe we do best when we do not come to Scripture with what I might call great expectations. Scripture will not always inspire or animate and it will not often titillate. When we insist that Scripture, if it is worth our while, must elicit some palpable spiritual experience, we misjudge its way and we overprivilege ourselves. From time to time, I come away from my daily reading deeply energized by some sudden insight. But, frankly, this is rare.

What I need far more than passing inspiration is the daily molding of my life—in its conscious and subconscious aspects—by words from God. Beyond that, I do not know what I need. To presume that I do, or to linger endlessly over a passage that happens to move me, seems arrogant and myopic. My soul—whatever else it means to use that word, I employ it here to speak of the totality of who I am—desperately needs the Holiness Code of Leviticus, the genealogical rooting of Chronicles, the Davidic story line of Samuel, the intense human language of the Psalms, the brilliant simplicity of the gospels, the sinewy logic of the Pauline letters, the visionary ‘pull’ of John’s Apocalypse, and much more.

I do not know in what measure my soul thirsts for each of these facts of Scripture. I simply cannot tell. So I submit myself to each of them in its turn, entrusting myself to the wisdom that shaped this canon which is larger and more important than my own small self.

Though I do not think a certain technique for spiritual formation is what most of us need, I commend the practice of reading through the Bible each year. Life with God, it seems to me, is much like an extended conversation. The shouts, the tears, the disagreements, the controversies, the resentments, the affections, the delirium, the praise are not—not any one of them—a lethal danger.

To break off the conversation, on the other hand, reeks of death.