Overcoming the Monotony of Scripture Reading

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]


Midweek Encounter 1.29.15
Overcoming the Monotony of Scripture Reading (are we allowed to say that?)

Have you ever watched a movie so many times that you have most or all of the dialogue memorized? Or perhaps you've read a book over and over or listened to a song so often that you can sing all the lyrics...and all of the riffs and percussion parts as well. Or maybe, like me, you thought you knew all the lyrics to the new Taylor Swift song but then learned, much to your disappointment, that it has nothing to do with Starbucks at all.

When you ask people about why they read and re-read and re-re-read Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, they often reply that every time they read the familiar stories again, they notice something new—subtle foreshadowing that they had missed before, or the beauty of the author’s word choice and arrangement. Or maybe they tell you that they find comfort in the familiarity of fictional characters or places they have come to love.

And while it’s easy to find literature fanatics, it can be a little harder to find Bible fanatics.

I have many friends who will excitedly share with me the plot of the book they’re reading or the show they’re watching, but I haven’t had many people rushing over to tell me the story of Naaman lately. Actually, the only person who tells me Bible stories with regularity is my daughter, Lily. She’s 4, and she loves to hear and tell stories. But already last Sunday, as we chatted over lunch, she told me that she learned the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well “again”. Again? She’s only 4. She didn’t say it in a way to suggest that she didn’t want to hear it again; rather, her tone indicated that she had already learned that story so she was ready to move on and learn the next one.

I think that’s my problem with reading the Bible. I’ve discovered that if I think I already think I know the story pretty well, I’ll just skim through it without looking for an actionable lesson or a change of heart. I’m not alone in this sentiment, luckily, because there is a fairly large body of literature written about reading the Bible well. In his preface to the book Eat This Book, Eugene Petersen writes, “But as it turns out, in this business of living the Christian life, ranking high among the most neglected aspects is one of having to do with the reading of the Christian Scriptures. Not that Christians don’t own and read their Bibles. And not that Christians don’t believe that their Bibles are the word of God. What is neglected is reading the Scriptures formatively, reading in order to live.” This is certainly true of my Bible reading. I don’t expect that there is something formative and exciting to be found, and I tend to read each passage as if it’s disconnected from the rest of the Bible. I happen to be an English teacher and I’m always asking kids to make connections across texts and within a text, but I rarely do that when I read the Bible, even though there may be no other work containing such profound foreshadowing or such masterfully metaphorical and allegorical stories and characters.

Petersen, near the end of his preface, makes this suggestion for reading the Scriptures intentionally: “What I want to say…is that in order to read the Scriptures adequately and accurately, it is necessary at the same time to live them. Not to live them as a prerequisite to reading them, and not to live them in consequence of reading them, but to live them as we read them…” Reading the Bible actively is hard, especially if the names and places are unfamiliar or if the stories seem entirely too familiar. But when we read as Petersen suggests—with the intention of living out each day’s readings—it adds purpose and function to a habit or discipline that can feel stale or odd or purposeless.



[Kristin vanEyk lives in Kentwood, MI where she attends Encounter Church with her husband Dirk, and two kids, Lily and Colin. Kristin teaches high school English and otherwise passes the time reading, writing, running, and enjoying all that Michigan's West Coast has to offer.]

Do You Smell Like Jesus?

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

I used to be good at reading the Bible. And by good, I mean I read it pretty regularly, even every day most of the time. 

Then something happened, the type of thing that seems to be almost inevitable when you follow Jesus for any length of time...I started to lose interest in the Bible. Reading it in bits and pieces didn't seem like it was doing anything. The words seemed as flat as the page they were written on. I suspect I'm not entirely alone in feeling that way. 

Maybe my problem was that I had fallen into thinking that reading the Bible is just about that--reading the words, making sure my eyes pass over each one simply so I can say I read it. But reading the Bible was never supposed to be about just reading the Bible. There are college courses teaching the Bible as literature, and while such studies have merit in their own right, when we approach the Bible like we would any other book, we miss the major point of it. 

The Bible isn't just words. It's the God behind them. 

Which means, as we read the story of Mary poured this expensive perfume on Jesus' feet, we should be asking ourselves what it reveals about who Jesus is--and how that, in turn, shapes our lives as we seek to become more like him. 

The perfume wasn't like dollar store body spray that lasts an hour and then dissipates. This was lasting, the scent initially saturating the house and invading the senses of those present, then clinging to Jesus for days afterwards. Wherever he went, people knew that Jesus had been near. The scent was unavoidable. Anything he did, people would associate those words, those actions, those feelings, all with Jesus. 

My Bible didn't come with scratch and sniff pages, but I don't need them to know that the scent Jesus spread was a good one. People would have associated that scent with love, truth, compassion, understanding, and grace. They experienced the smell of Jesus firsthand as they talked with him and ate with him and laughed with him. While we can’t do those same things, if we let it, the Bible tells us what we need to know about how we can soak up those wonderful attributes of Jesus. 

When we approach the Bible as more than just words on a page, we can get whiffs of what the aroma of Jesus was like. We’re invited to discover it for ourselves, and tasked with spreading that good scent wherever we go. II Corinthians 2:16 describes it as “an aroma that brings life.” By seeing the God behind the words and joining in the work he is already doing, we can be carriers of the aroma of Jesus wherever we go. 

[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She loves Christmas and can be found spreading Christmas cheer by singing loud for all to hear. You can read more of her musings on her own blog or follow her on Twitter @bwitt722.]

Fighting For the Sabbath

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

Taking time for a Sabbath can seem like just one more thing to add to the to-do list. Between doing homework, going to meetings at work, driving to basketball practice, making dinner, and getting the kids to bed at a semi-reasonable hour, it seems like "Taking time to rest" is just another thing we'll get around to someday when we have the time. And that time is definitely not now. 

People in Nehemiah's day may have felt like didn't have the time for a Sabbath either. Though the details of their daily lives likely looked much different than ours do today, they were probably still busy going to work, raising families, making food, and more. When Nehemiah came back into town and stopped the merchants and sellers from doing their thing on the Sabbath, more than just the merchants and sellers were probably upset. "We're busy!" the people may have cried. "We have things to do, so let us do them when we want to!" 

Unfortunately for them, Nehemiah understood the benefits of taking a Sabbath, and not only that, he was prepared to make it happen. He knew sometimes it's worth fighting for what matters, and the Sabbath was just that. It wasn't that the activities the merchants and sellers were involved in were objectively wrong, but that the Sabbath was not the day to do them. The Sabbath was to be respected, set apart, and guarded, all to the end of making space for the people to have their hearts changed to crave God. 

I don't think these messages on rest are Pastor Dirk's attempt at making a unilateral decision of how the idea of taking a Sabbath should look in each person's life. He did, however, offer some great starting points we should all be taking a close look at and deciding how they might look for us. For me, an electronic pause is something I am sorely in need of, yet my fear of being disconnected often holds me back. Coincidentally (or not, as I suspect God has a sense of humor about things like this), the day before I heard this message I spilled water on my laptop, taking it completely out of commission for a few days and partially out of commission for at least a few days more. It wasn't a complete electronic pause, and it wasn't one I chose for myself, but I still found it to be beneficial. I did things I don't do as much of when Netflix, Facebook, and Pinterest are ever-present options, and it was a valuable reminder that breaks are important and beneficial. 

Taking a Sabbath may not be a comfortable experience, at least at first. We may have to fight for the space to Sabbath and become okay with setting aside good things for what will be the best thing. It may take planning, getting creative, and learning to be uncomfortable in our rest, but in the end, fighting for the Sabbath can put us in a place of being open to what God has for us.

[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She loves Christmas and can be found spreading Christmas cheer by singing loud for all to hear. You can read more of her musings on her own blog or follow her on Twitter @bwitt722.]

Practicing Sabbath

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

During the month of January, I’m teaching a class that meets from 8:00-11:00. Every day at 9:45, I offer the kids a 15-minute break and tell them that we’ll start something new at 10:00. And so far, every day, at least half of the students have chosen to work through the break. They wrap up what they’re doing around 9:58 and then wait for us to begin something new on the hour.

You’ve probably encountered this many times. You or your kids or your friends become engrossed in something and work frantically to finish it before taking a quick break and then moving on to the next thing.

I watched my daughter do this yesterday afternoon. She is the “Special Person” this week at school and had a book to complete. At first, she was carefully coloring pictures and sounding out words so she could write them accurately. After an hour, she was scribbling and not writing any words at all. Lily loves to color, and I knew that if I let her do one page a day, she would make each page beautiful. But the book was 7 pages long and we didn’t have 7 days to work on it. When I asked her to take a break and finish it later, she replied, “No, I really want to get it all done right now. It will just take a minute.” This no-breaks attitude is one that starts very young, apparently, and follows us through life.

This problem with my class is the same problem that many of us encounter in our every day lives: the work we are doing is engrossing and ongoing. Why take a 15-minute break when there’s more to read, more to write, and a project due next week? Perhaps you’ve faced the same dilemma during your “break” at work or school or while your kids nap in the afternoons. Why take a break when there’s laundry to fold, bills to pay, floors to clean, grocery lists to write, and emails to send?

A CNN article that ran in October of 2014 noted that Americans are now “ taking [the] fewest vacation days in four decades” and that “Americans are work martyrs, [leaving] more and more paid time off unused each year.” The article estimates that workers sacrificed $52.4 billion in vacation compensation in 2013. And as it turns out, it’s all for naught. The article also mentions that those who get the raises and promotions are the ones who are actually taking their allotted vacation days. You can dissect this in all kinds of socioeconomic ways—that the people getting raises and taking vacation days are getting paid vacation time, etc. But the fact remains: Americans rarely call in sick, rarely take personal days, and don’t even take all of their vacation days.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why God commands us to take a Sabbath each week. Maybe God knows that we become fixated on completing tasks or achieving the next goal and so he forces us to take a break. We object, by believing that we don’t need a break to recharge, or by insisting that we really want to just finish the next stage of our projects, but God knows what we need. And what we need is Sabbath.

Today I forced my students to take a 10 minute break.  At 9:50 I told them to stand up and follow me to the hall. And then I told them to return to the classroom at 10:00. They looked at me like I was crazy, but then they all left and came back 10 minutes later. We they happier and more productive? I’m not sure. But if they had planned to meet a friend or do something they were looking forward to during the break, I have no doubt that they would have been refreshed. While I’m certainly not trying to compare myself to God, but I am going to suggest that you can find ways to hold yourself or others accountable to a Sabbath. I don’t mean in a burdensome way; I mean that you can plan something enjoyable and relaxing to do on your Sabbath so that you will take a rest. You can plan to meet friends for lunch, for example, and leave your phone in the car. You can order a new book on Amazon and promise yourself that you’ll start it on Sunday after church or Tuesday or whichever day works best for a break. You can enlist a weekly babysitter so one night each week is date night.  We spend so much of our lives planning our work, that the Sabbath can sometimes feel empty, or like “wasted” time before we can get back to our daily tasks. What if we planned our Sabbath time, just like we plan the rest of our time, so that we would have something restful to look forward to?  A walk, a book, a shopping trip, coffee with a friend, engaging in a hobby, taking a much-needed nap. It’s time for a break. God insists upon it. 

[Kristin vanEyk lives in Kentwood, MI where she attends Encounter Church with her husband Dirk, and two kids, Lily and Colin. Kristin teaches high school English and otherwise passes the time reading, writing, running, and enjoying all that Michigan's West Coast has to offer.]