Knowing your Bible…..
This may seem strange but for years I have been suspicious of biblical study. As I grew up I often witnessed people arguing over it, allowing their differing interpretations to divide them, sometimes even moving beyond division and into conflict. Conflict is something I’ve always had an irrational and even an acute fear of, particularly in my youth and so to summarise, the equation in my head went something like “Time + Scripture + Depth = Division”. I continued in my subscription to this belief right up until last Sunday, preferring to invest in the practical outworking of my faith and running from what I had observed the product of over investment in the study of scripture brought. I felt nauseous by what I had seen men of the Word become and was determined never to allow myself to become so obsessed with the Word that the world and its people failed to be within my focus. If “Word = Knowledge = Division = Separation” then I’d rather not bother.

As I’m all too often reminded this year I turned 30. Maybe there’s a connection but it seems to be a season for throwing off the baggage of youth and this suspicion needed to be dumped. Mainly because I’ve realised I have a spiritual indigestion, the outworking has drained me and even brought an internal drought. In the light of this new era of life there feels a crucial need to revisit a lot of my thinking but particularly in relation to scripture and my relationship with it. I was sharing something of this journey with my dad looking for him to provide some stimulus in thinking how to address it. It was one of the moments that you look back on and call a God incidence as opposed to a coincidence. He told me of a book he was reading written by John Stott were he describes how Dr Martin Lloyd Jones introduced him to a bible reading calendar written by Robert Murray McCheyne in 1842. John Stott then goes on to recommend that every Christian should read the bible from cover to cover once a year and that McCheyne’s calendar is the best he’s come across for doing this. I did a wee bit of research and found it on the web. If your interested in it and in joining me reading the bible in 2004 I invite you to click on the link. Its only 4 chapters a day, which in the year will enable you to read the Old Testament once and the New Testament and Psalms twice. It also suggests creative ways to assist you in doing this.

Happy new year!
I’d like to take this opportunity to wish each reader a great new year. May it be a year of sifting the wheat from the chaff leading to a greater intimacy with and bringing a smile to our Lord’s face.