Reading

  Sometimes it feels as though I'm trying to read my way into the Kingdom of Heaven.  I'm constantly in search of the one book that will illumine the Christian life for me, that I will suddenly come forward into a clearing of understanding and grasp exactly how the Holy Spirit wants me to live.

  In doing so, I underestimate the Bible's transformational powers.  And I expect too much for other authors, too.

  The mistake I make when I read for spiritual growth is that I read to learn more about myself.  Instead, the purpose of so much reading is that I am learning more about God--only by learning about God first do I begin to understand who and how I truly am.  When I begin to grasp that all of creation is God's gracious outreach and that God has made me out of his generous love, I can be transformed as someone who has been claimed by God despite the fact that I am unworthy.  No matter how much I learn about myself, if I do not base my self-image on God's view of me, I am misaligned from the beginning.

  This is the gift of reading the Bible--it illumines from the beginning God's outpourings of selfless love.  It shows how God, through the ages, has been generously pouring out grace on his creation.  It shows, too, what proper (and improper) human responses are to that love, but the Bible is God's story, first, just as my life should be an unfolding of God working through me, rather than me trying to figure out how God fits into my life.

  In my reading, I too often put myself first, in the hopes of then figuring out God's place in my life.  A better way to go about this would be to read for the intention of trying to learn more about God, so that in knowing God better, I can recognize that he has already claimed my entire life.

  And then, well, something you just need to read a wonderful tale for the sheer joy of it.  I just finished The Hobbit, and the not nearly as wonderful Moby Dick, and I'm better for reading both of them.