In The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America,<\/em> travel writer Bill Bryson tells of visiting Hannibal, Missouri, Mark Twain\u2019s hometown.The house where the great writer grew up is still there. It\u2019s a modest white clapboard house, tucked into the middle of Hannibal\u2019s downtown. Next to it is the famous whitewashed picket fence from the novel, Tom Sawyer<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While he was visiting this historic home, Bryson fell into conversation with a fellow tourist. \u201cWhat do you think of the place?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, I think it\u2019s great,\u201d replied the man. \u201cI always come here when I\u2019m in Hannibal \u2014 two or three times a year. Sometimes I go out of my way to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cReally?\u201d asked Bryson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh yes,\u201d the man said. \u201cI must have been here 20 or 30 times by now. This is a real shrine, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bryson replied, \u201cYou must be a real fan and follower of Mark Twain. Would you say the house is just like he described it in his books?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, I don\u2019t know,\u201d said the tourist. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have the foggiest notion. I\u2019ve never read any of his books!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, how does that happen, do you suppose? How does a man become a fan of a writer \u2014 enough to visit his home 20 or 30 times \u2014 without reading a single one of his books?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe the guy saw a few movie adaptations \u2014 Tom Sawyer<\/em>, Huckleberry Finn<\/em>, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur\u2019s Court<\/em>. Or maybe he had the chance to watch the late Hal Holbrook impersonate the great raconteur in his one-man show, Mark Twain Tonight. <\/em>Back in the day, Twain\u2019s lecture tours were the closest thing 19th-century America had to stand-up comedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if the man did encounter Twain\u2019s stories secondhand, it still doesn\u2019t explain his enthusiasm. It seems very strange, indeed. No stranger, though, than the legions of Christians \u2014 even passionate, enthusiastic Christians \u2014 who only rarely pick up a Bible and read it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once upon a time, there was a good excuse for not reading the Bible. Back before Herr Gutenberg\u2019s invention of the printing press that made mass-produced books possible, Bibles were as rare as hens\u2019 teeth. They had to be laboriously copied out by hand. What most people knew of Bible stories \u2014 in medieval times, or even earlier \u2014 was based on sermons they\u2019d heard in church, or maybe images they\u2019d seen in stained glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s hardly true today. Stop by a bookstore or do an Amazon search, and you\u2019ll see dozens of Bibles to choose from \u2014 different translations and all manner of special editions. Why, the Bible\u2019s probably more accessible today, to a greater number of people on this planet, than it has ever been in human history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, why is it that we still live in a culture that reveres the very idea of the Bible, but knows so little about what\u2019s in it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In case you doubt that suggestion, consider this familiar quotation: \u201cGod helps those who help themselves.\u201d Does the quotation come from the Bible?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you answered, \u201cyes,\u201d you\u2019re wrong. \u201cGod helps those who help themselves\u201d occurs nowhere in the Bible. It was written by Benjamin Franklin and published in his Poor Richard\u2019s Almanac<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biblical illiteracy is everywhere!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In today\u2019s Gospel, Jesus says: \u201cIt is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life\u201d (John 6:63).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus is introducing a way to read the Scriptures that\u2019s different from the fundamentalism of today. Rather than focusing on static, unchanging, uninterpreted words on a page, Jesus describes his own words as alive, inspired by the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notice how he says, \u201cthe words that I have spoken<\/em> to you.\u201d Jesus isn\u2019t talking about the written word. He\u2019s talking about his own spoken word \u2014 and that word his church continues to receive, by the grace of God, as we faithfully and prayerfully read the Scriptures, pondering what the Lord may be saying to us through<\/em> them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, how do we do that? How do we open ourselves to the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first thing you must do is know where to begin <\/em>reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, that\u2019s easy,\u201d you may say to yourself. The only place to begin is at the beginning: Genesis, Chapter 1: \u201cWhen God began to create the heavens and the earth \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those early chapters of Genesis do make pretty good reading. Stories like Adam and Eve in the garden, the Tower of Babel, Noah and the ark. Here you\u2019ll find the lives of the patriarchs: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah and Rachel. Right after that comes the thrilling set of stories known as the Joseph cycle: Joseph and his coat of many colors, sold into slavery, given up for dead, rising to the highest level of authority short of the Pharaoh \u2014 but deciding to use his powers for grace and forgiveness, rather than revenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You don\u2019t get too far, though, in those first books of the Bible, before you come upon chapter after chapter of dreary, ancient laws. Then you come upon historical accounts of wars and conquests. Those stories fairly drip with blood. Some of them meet the contemporary definition of genocide \u2014 and it\u2019s God\u2019s people doing the killing! The Hebrew Scriptures not only mention such horrors, at times they even revel in them, claiming that such slaughter was carried out with the expert technical assistance of none other than God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No doubt there\u2019s something to be gained from every part of the Bible, but it takes an awful lot of interpretation to boil certain biblical stories down into food that nourishes our spirits today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re looking for a place to begin a daily Bible-reading discipline, choose a simple book like the Gospel of Mark. It shares the essential message of Jesus\u2019 life, death and resurrection in simple fashion. Better to start there than in the Gospel of John. That book\u2019s laden with some pretty heavy-duty theology, served up in the form of long discourses that can seem tedious and repetitious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re looking to delve into Paul\u2019s letters, don\u2019t start with the long ones like Romans and Corinthians, with their complex, sometimes ponderous, sentences. Try, instead, the beautiful little letter to the Philippians, which explores the subject of Christian love in some truly engaging ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And remember that the Bible is not a book. It\u2019s a library.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That may sound obvious to anyone who\u2019s ever tried \u2014 perhaps in Sunday school \u2014 to memorize the order of the books of the Bible. Most of us know, on some level, that the Bible\u2019s a collection of individual books, written over the course of many centuries. Some of those books are history, some poetry, some philosophy, some letters sent by apostles like Paul to various churches. Then there are the strange, apocalyptic books like Daniel and Revelation. Those are something else altogether! Yet, because all those books are gathered together, encased in an elegant leather cover, we tend to forget this blazingly obvious fact. Unconsciously, we fall back into treating the Bible as a single book \u2014 which is not at all helpful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That single-book approach wreaks havoc with our understanding of what we\u2019re reading. Why? Because we simply have to know what sort of literature we\u2019re dealing with, as we open any biblical book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you go down to your local public library looking for an automotive book to tell you how to change the oil in your car, but you end up in the poetry section instead, you\u2019re not going to find what you\u2019re looking for. By the same token, if you\u2019re looking for a good biography and end up in the biology section by mistake, the only title that looks at all promising is one called, The Lives of a Cell. <\/em>But when you open that one up, you\u2019ll find it\u2019s like no biography you\u2019ve ever read!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The essential first step in letting a book of the Bible speak to you is determining what category the book belongs to. If you have the good fortune of owning a study Bible \u2014 offering a short introduction to each book, written by scholars who\u2019ve translated the ancient Hebrew or Greek into English \u2014 you\u2019ll go a long way towards finding God\u2019s word to you in its pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re the sort of person who likes to underline or highlight passages from books, there\u2019s absolutely no reason why you shouldn\u2019t do so with a Bible you\u2019re using for study. And, if you happen to accidentally drop your Bible or lay another book on top of it, don\u2019t give it a second thought. It\u2019s no sacrilege! Bibles aren\u2019t meant to be adored. They\u2019re meant to be read, re-read, bookmarked, underlined \u2014 whatever you need to do to get deeply into the message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silent meditation and prayer are critical when reading the Bible. Don\u2019t bite off huge chunks of the Scriptures. Focus instead on small, manageable pieces \u2014 a paragraph or two is about right. Pray for the Holy Spirit to guide your understanding, then read a passage, pause for reflection and read it again. Maybe even pause again, emptying your mind of stray thoughts, then read it a third time, concentrating on insights different from those you picked up earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think of yourself as being in conversation with the Lord as you read. \u201cLord, what do you want me to know or feel today?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But far more important than getting any methodology just right is to go home, set aside a block of time, turn off your phone and open your Bible. A certain sportswear company has the motto, \u201cJust do it!\u201d When it come to the Bible, the best motto is, \u201cJust read it!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, travel writer Bill Bryson tells of visiting Hannibal, Missouri, Mark Twain\u2019s hometown.The house where the great writer grew up is still there. It\u2019s a modest white clapboard house, tucked into the middle of Hannibal\u2019s downtown. Next to it is the famous whitewashed picket fence from the novel, Tom Sawyer. While […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n