So I'm very slowly reading through the Bible, and chronicling my thoughts and insights on Blogger (
click here). Right now I'm in Numbers, and I have to say, this is a book I don't really get. I mean, the title really says it all - a lot of it is lists and names and such. I'm not entirely sure what the book of Numbers teaches me about God, and most of the time when I'm reading it I'm really distracted, trying to figure out how on earth there were so many Israelites (I have since found an online resource that has been quite helpful in this regard). A lot of it is instructions for purification and sacrifices and whatnot. Since we already went over all that in Leviticus and will do it again in Deuteronomy, this is the part of the Bible where I start wondering how beneficial it is to me spiritually to read the book.
Well, the other day I had a though, and my thought was that I have the entire rest of my life to read the Bible, and during that time, I hope to understand and appreciate it more each time I read it. Even if it takes me, say, five years to get through the Bible one time, if I live to my life expectancy I have quite a few reads left. There are a number of books that I understand better now than I did a few years ago, and I expect to understand them better in the years to come.
A memory comes to me when I think of this. Several years ago, a man in my church who became a good friend of my brother's (his name is Joe) got baptized. At that time we had a tradition wherein the baptized person asked a close friend to be his or her "encourager" and to say something to them and read a passage of Scripture to encourage them in their obedience to Christ and whatnot. Joe's encourager was a man named Michael. For those of you reading this who go to Belhaven, this Michael is very much like an older version of Michael Preston (they even look alike!). To everyone else reading this, imagine the guy from the Jesus movie, playing the guitar, always wearing sandals and usually shorts (a kilt on St. Patrick's Day), very animated - full of life. The passage Michael read to Joe at his baptism was out of Leviticus, and it was a description of some kind of burnt offering. Bo-ring! But funny, Michael read that passage with such enthusiasm, such . . . delight . . . that I got this impression that he saw something in those words which I at that time could not. And I thought to myself that I wanted to know what it was that the book meant to him.
I am glad that I don't understand Numbers yet; it reminds me that I have so much room to grow. A lot of the time, being a church brat, I start imagining that I understand the Bible pretty well. It's not true. I have learned quite a bit about it from other people, but I have learned very little of it on my own, because I have studied it very little on my own. I am hoping to remedy this as I read the Bible through this time. They say great books are the ones that are above your heads, and so challenge you to raise your level of understanding. I think that the Bible will always be above my head, but that my understanding will grow each time I read it with that intention. And I am looking forward to that.
So with that in mind, maybe I'll be more diligent as I continue reading the book of Numbers.
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