Word alive

"... the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it." Deuteronomy 30.14

Since the Enlightenment opened the door to rationalism, there has been an attempt to subject the Bible to academic scrutiny - as if it was merely one ancient manuscript among others. Such an attitude threatens to blind us to the possibility that, like creation, God is speaking to us personally and powerfully, collectively and apocalyptically. If that is the case then a more productive and appropriate attitude would be to sit under the Bible - as Holy Scripture. This is not to say that we should not bring the resources of scholarship to bear, in the same way that we use telescopes and microscopes to observe creation. But we do so in awe and wonder, rather than in superiority and judgment.

Is it not like falling in love? We do not approach the object of our ardour, as a mere creature to be analysed according to their faculties. Rather, we abandon ourselves to unquestioning adoration. The Bible is sometimes described as God's Love Letter to humanity. Considering some of the sobering messages therein that sounds too sentimental. Yet, accepting that even the most excoriating passages are motivated by love and that all of it has searching truths and that much of it contains promises beyond our hope and imagining would surely revolutionise our expectation of its impact?

Jesus is the word made flesh. The written word finds expression in the living word. Keep this in mind every time you open your Bible, every time you hear it in church and on the radio, or read it on your mobile... Let it thrill you, challenge you, shock you and - like all the best real-ilife encounters - transform you!