Found a draft I never finished :)

Disclaimer: I wrote this last May and never got around to posting it. I don't remember how I was going to end it, but I think I liked where I was going with it. Eh, we'll see.


Discipleship group kinda sent my head spinning again tonight, but mostly in a good way. Andrew likes to go through whatever we're talking about in a socratic way and ends up asking too many questions at once, but it definitely got the old brain-gears turning. Last week we talked about what the Bible is, and not just the cheesy sunday school answer "it's a love letter from God," (which, as far as cheesy sunday school answers go, is actually one of my favorites). We started out slow, kinda dipping our toes into the water to see if other people would speak up, but once the ball got rolling you couldn't shut us up. Some of the big things: it's more than a textbook, it's more than an epic story, and it has to be read in the context in which it was written (i.e. the gospels are narratives, the epistles were letters TO SPECIFIC GROUPS OF PEOPLE, and revelations is largely figurative.) It's not just a pretty book that sits on the shelf with your family's genealogy collecting dust between readings. It isn't Poor Richard's Almanac - you can't just pick out pretty little verses and hang them over your door frame and mold them to mean whatever the heck you want. My favorite example of this: Jeremiah 29:11. Don't get me wrong, I love this verse for what it is, but I've come to love it even more IN CONTEXT.

"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.'"

People like to use this as a nothing-will-ever-go-wrong, feel-good strand of words. It's not. It's actually saying, it will be crappy, yes, very crappy for a while, but something is better up ahead. God had just put the israelites INTO exile because they were being selfish, sin-happy idiots. GOD put them in exile. BUT he knew of bigger plans, and leaving them where they were, continuing to pull away from Him, wouldn't do. Note that in this context, the verse is not saying that absolutely nothing craptastic will ever happen to you. It's saying that it may suck for a very long time. You might not see the promise land, but IAM here, and I have a better plan down the road. I think that is much more useful - rain or shine, He is with me, even when I can't see it.

The Bible is also not supposed to be arm candy for sunday-only christians who want to fit in. In a sense, that's terribly demeaning to the Word, to bring it on sunday to make yourself look good and clean and pure and righteous when it's not even worth your time to so much as think about it or even crack it open during the week. And now I sound like a hypocrite because there are plenty of weeks where I neglect reading altogether, but I'm trying to move forward and improve that. There's a marked difference in the days I spend time in the Word and days I don't - I would have so much more joy in my life if I made that my focus daily. And to clarify, when I say spend time in the word I'm not talking about going through the motions of half-heartedly reading a chapter of John, I mean those days when I am on my knees in prayer digging into the scriptures and falling head over heels in love with my Creator.

So from what my 18-year-old, not-graduated-from-seminary brain can wrap itself around, here's what the Bible is:

A compilation of laws, history, poetry, song, prophecy, stories, letters, and symbolic imagery designed to reveal God's character to us. What I mean by that: when you spend a lot of time with a person, you can finish each other's sentences. So, reading about God's love, righteousness, jealousy, mercy, law, and forgiveness teaches you about how He would respond to different situations, That way, when you face a decision that has no specific scriptural reference (i.e. where should I go to college?), you have a better sense of His will and discerning HIS voice in all the crazy going on in your head.

A living book. What makes it 'living'? Well for starters, it's been applicable and relatable for nearly 2000 years (NT). Second, it connects you and all the other believers together, tying doctrine back to this one source. Third, the Holy Spirit played a huge role in the creation of the scriptures, and will play an even bigger role in how they are interpreted.

I don't know what else I was going to say about mi biblia, but what do you think of where I was going so far? I've already adjusted some of what I think since then, but it's neat seeing this little snapshot of how I thought 7 months ago.

Happy finals!

Sarah

and no, this sudden nostalgia has nothing to do with my impending birthday. Nothing to do with a highly illogical fear that some kind of 18th birthday magic will wear off in a few days when I enter my last year of being a teenager. Not at all.