Reading God's Word

This week, our Lent focus is on the Spiritual Discipline of Scripture. I have come across people who question if we should read the Scripture on our own instead of reading what others are saying about God's word. It is wonderful that people want to think about what God has said, but it is more important that we read for ourselves what is said in the Bible.

Before I get into the nerdy discussion of "Reading the Bible for yourself", I would like to talk about something just as nerdy. I recently come across a video of someone presenting in a TED Talk that all these "Green Energy Effort" is not helping the environment. That led to a discussion I had with someone else that has something to do with our faith.

Solar energy is everywhere, but in order for us to harvest that energy, it takes a lot of solar panels. These panels essentially turn the sunlight into energy, but to-date, the technology is not there to efficiently convert that energy into substantial amount to supply a town, let alone a city. In order to even power a town, will take football fields of these panels to generate enough power to do so. The problem is that they would generate so much heat, birds has been known to be cooked alive while "accidentally" fly over these arrays.

However, if a collection of homes install small panels to cut down their demands on the grid by at least 30%, the demand on the grid is much smaller, which allows everything to become more efficient.

What does that have to do with our faith? If a Church body operates like that of the first scenario, Christians are relying on their weekly "filling" from the pastor, and the pastor has to blast them with a nuclear amount of teachings that hopefully will last them until next week. It is inefficient, and someone will get burn one way or the other.

If a Church is Spiritually Disciplined, they will be willing to generate that "energy" on their own which is supplemented by the weekly teaching of the pastor. When that happen, not only will they have more than enough energy for themselves, there is enough to share with those around them.

"Doing good" will only get us so far with those around us. Only when we live the life we learn from reading the Bible, knowing who we are, and where our centre is we can be more to the people around us.

Thy Word