Do you ever read guidebooks about a place before you visit it? I try, and find I can’t really retain the details – it’s too abstract, too flat. Once I’ve been there, though, I enjoy going back to the book, to let its information fill out what I’ve now seen and experienced.
The Bible can be that way – a whole lot of information and other people’s stories, until we experience God for ourselves and have a personal context from which to process those writings. Perhaps that’s how the Scriptures were for Jesus’ followers before the resurrection, sacred writings that spoke of God’s activity in the past and promises of some future restoration that they couldn’t imagine. But from the standpoint of his risen-ness – ah, now, let’s read that prophecy again.
Is this what the two disciples on the Emmaus road experienced when the stranger walking with them began to teach them? “Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.”
Later, they say, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” With interpretation, all those words and stories of God suddenly made a kind of sense. They were leading somewhere. Yes, they had their own validity in their original times and communities – and now they also had a new interpretation, both broader and narrower, pointing to what God was up to in the mission of Jesus Christ on earth.
Guidebooks are great, but we often benefit from having a guide as well - a person who’s been further up the road, to help us interpret the path we’re traveling. In Jesus, those sojourners found a Guide who could help interpret the Guidebook. In the Holy Spirit, we get the same gift – as we read the Scriptures alone or with others, aided by the presence of Christ’s Spirit, they often come to life, and bring life to us.
Who has helped you better understand parts of the Bible that you’ve read? Who have you helped?
What other guides have come alongside you on the spiritual path, to help make sense of your surroundings – spiritual directors, teachers, authors?
If reading the bible is a challenge for you, you might take a small chunk each day and pray before you read, “Holy Spirit, please be with me in my reading and receiving – show me what gifts your Word has for me today.” Read and see what catches your attention. Read it again. Try reading it aloud. Stay with it for another day if it’s giving you life.
If you’re not part of a bible study group, I highly recommend joining one – having other people’s insights and perspectives opens it up for us.
This Book of ours is a pretty good guidebook, but some parts can be dull, others can seem out of touch, even angering. The terrain it describes is vast and intricate, ancient and yet to come. But with the Spirit’s help, this Word can nurture our spirits and strengthen our faith… and occasionally even start a fire in our hearts.
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