The Everchanging Read

I am not exactly sure what year I started reading the Bible, but it was a long time ago.   I can also remember my first Bible and, actually, still have it stuck back in a box.   As I think about a life time of reading the Word, it seems that I have read it for different reasons at different times in my spiritual journey.  As a young boy,  I was taken in by the stories, particularly those in the Old Testament.  If there were discrepancies or things that I could not understand, it did not bother me, nor keep me from reading. 

 

Later in my early Christian years, it became a spiritual "how to" book.  Far too much legalism worked its way into my beginning years of the journey and I read the book to find out how to do the Christian life, what to do and not do, and how to judge whether others were on track.  The pleasure of reading as a boy was replaced by the duty of young believer.  And, of course, as I moved along into college and seminary, the Word became something other than a spiritual guide.  It became a textbook to be examined and questioned.  Lost was the wonder of the boy reading and in its place came the skeptic out to prove everything.

 

As I have become an old man, I find myself more like the boy.  Maybe such is how life works.  I still read the Word, but it is more like an old friend who has enabled me to make it this far in this journey of faith.  I read with gratitude and respect.  I no longer read out of duty.  I read with longing and expectation.  I still have some questions, but mostly, I want to just sit with this old spiritual companion and listen for the voice of God Who I have learned still speaks.