So I am sorry I haven't been able to keep up with this blog as much as I wanted to. To give you all an update on myself, I am working two jobs, applying for grad school, taking lots of classes, and attempting to keep up a social life. I have a wonderful loving girlfriend, a great supportive family, and a general lack of free time that plagues many students my age. None of this surprises me. I have been living a life on the go since I was very young. What surprised me is how difficult it has been keeping up with this blog, and how difficult it has been reading every day.
I find myself in an interesting position. I find myself struggling to want to read parts of God's word. Obviously this seems a little blasphemous, and I feel that a good Christian should feel a hunger for every word that God has inspired in this world. But what I have found particularly challenging is reading parts of the old testament. I have now finished both Leviticus and Numbers, two books that honestly test my faith in really interesting ways. For those of you that haven't read these books, they often go long portions without and real narrative. Sometimes entire pages are devoted to explaining exactly how to do a ritual before God, or even simply describing inanimate objects. Yet at the same time they demand thought and intuition as this is the history of the faith I proclaim and the history of God's people. Even through all this, I can't help bringing up questions such as "What the hell could God possibly be telling me through this?" and even "why is this worth my time?" I am also reading the Gospel of Luke, the third Gospel which means that I have heard many of the stories two times before, and will hear them a fourth time. I am 51 Psalms into the bible as well, which means that I am 51 non rhyming songs that often have repetitive themes and phrases. I like to think that this is a problem that many Christians have. Reading scripture is often difficult and non of us do it as much as we should. Life gets in the way, stuff happens, and we either don't have time, or the willpower to open up our Bibles and read what God is trying to tell us. But there are things that we can do to help us. I have found that audio versions of the text have been essential for me to continue with this task. You can get them in almost any version for free on YouTube and some will even be dramatized with different people doing voices for different characters. This has brought the text to life for me in ways that simply reading the old testament hasn't. There are many bible apps for smartphones that provide verses of the day for free that give their subscribers a little bit of scripture every single day, not overwhelming and just enough. And of course, going to church on Sundays provides scripture and commentary to help a person deal with any possible problem. Here's the bottom line. We all should read scripture more, and many of us fall short of that goal. But there are things to do to help, and resources out there to help us bring the scripture to life. And know that God loves you, if you read every single hour of every day, or if bats would fly out of your bible if you opened it. Be sure in his love, go in peace, and know that the story of his love rests at your disposal.
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