The Good Book

"from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures"

2 Timothy 3:15

I read an interesting book the other day.  Yup.  Read the whole thing in one day.  All 200 pages.  It wasn't a difficult book.  As a matter of fact, I discovered it in the Youth section of the library.  I was helping Amazing Boy look for a specific book, and this book caught my eye.  So I had him check it out for me.  :)  And once I'd gotten started, it was hard to put it down.  It was a simple story, but I could feel that it had a message for me; it was making me think, and the thinking it was making me do was going to have a lasting impact on my life.  Have you ever felt that way?

I've never heard of the book, or the author.  It's called The Animal Family, by Randall Jarrell, and although it was in the Youth section, I'm not entirely sure that's where it belongs.  Yes, it can be read by a child, but there's so much more there than meets the eye.  It reminds me a lot of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince.  Have you read that?  If not, I highly recommend it.   It's a book with a message simple enough for a child, and yet the more you read it, the more you get out of it.

Sound familiar?  This is one of my favorite things about Scripture.  There's a wonderful quote that perfectly describes this phenomenon:  "The Bible is shallow enough for a child to wade in, but deep enough for an elephant to swim in."  There's some dispute about the actual wording of the quote, as well as the origin of it, but I love the message.  The Bible contains verses such as "God so loved the world, He gave His only Son;" "Be strong and courageous;" and "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me".   But it also contains verses like Romans 3:25-26, "God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of His blood - to be received by faith.  He did this to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - He did it to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the One who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."

Whew!   That is a beautiful verse, that explains the wonder and love of His sacrifice for us, but it takes a couple of readings to get the full meaning.  It would be hard for a child to get all that there is out of that sentence, and as much as I love diagramming, that is not a sentence I would want to diagram!

The Bible is a book to be read, re-read, and studied.   I love what Acts 17:11 says about the Jews in Berea:  "they were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."

But it's also meant to bring you peace, and rest.  It's been said that the message of the entire Bible can be summed up thusly:  "Jesus loves me, this I know, for my Bible tells me so."

I pray that you read some of the Bible every day, and that what you read is simple enough to give you peace and joy, and intriguing enough that you want to keep pondering it all day!

~ "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness" ~

2 Timothy 3:16