"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms



"Our lives disconnect and reconnect, we move on, and later we may touch one another, again bounce away. This is the felt shape of a human life, neither simply linear nor wholly disjunctive nor endlessly bifurcating, but rather this bouncey sequence of bumping into's and tumblings apart."
~ Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet



Sunday, January 15, 2012

The Bible...

"For most human failings, there is a biblical character to provide company for our misery."
~ Alyce M. Mckenzie



The bible is a poetic, epic story that reveals the rhythms of all that is life, a meta-narrative - brilliant because all that is written on its pages, “… is common to us all…” and as such gives each of us hope in a God that relentlessly loves and desires to be with his/her creation regardless of where we find ourselves in life.

Brian Mclaren put it this way, “…whatever the Bible is, it simply is not a constitution. I would like to propose that it is something far more interesting and important: it’s the library of a culture and community—the culture and community of people who trace their history back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…. I’m recommending we read the Bible as an inspired library. This inspired library preserves, presents, and inspires an ongoing vigorous conversation with and about God, a living and vital civil argument into which we are all invited and through which God is revealed” {McLaren, Brian D. (2010-02-09). A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (p. 81,83). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition}. 

This way of reading, thinking, imagining the bible really resonates with me and I believe that if the bible is read as a library of life as opposed to a constitution of rules there is richness and a profoundness that is resplendent.

Just this past week in preparation for the Gospels class that I will be taking I was reading the book of Isaiah and I was so struck with its depth when read through the prism of Jesus – a Christological hermeneutic. The words from the book of Isaiah illuminated my imagination in a new way, new life to the words on the page. Indeed, as I read the bible this way, it, “…inspires an ongoing vigorous conversation with and about God, a living and vital civil argument into which we are all invited and through which God is revealed.”

I guess what I am trying to say is that the bible is real and meaningful for me because it is my story, my story with God and not only my story but the story of everyone I meet. It is a grand story of what it means to be human and to be part of history and in reading it I learn more and more of what life is all about and how magnificent the love and grace of God is for everyone!




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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 15, 2012 at 6:21 PM

    Coming to know what God's love is, and how He loves us must capture our souls first, and when that happens we do read the bible differently.
    I think in Isaiah are the words.....wake up and rise up from the dead. It is like we have been asleep all along & all of a sudden we know what God is trying to share with us.....real love...its the best, most powerful thing God ever did for us. I think what happens that all of a sudden we have a fresh step in our walk with God as the Holy Spirit leads us.

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