The bible is no boring piece of writing—it’s a beautiful and messy work. Gratefully, there is not a one size fits all way to read the Scriptures and understand them. Like a rainbow of color, the light of each new day shines anew on the truth. Even more, each category of this ancient book (law, history, prophet, poetry, songs, gospel, and apostolic) has a redemptive effect on its reader. There is an unending supply of grace on each page, and each word spoken over our lives seems to inject energy into tiring circumstances—a breath of fresh air into our singleness, marriages, vocations, and vacations.
I walk with a few guys in discipleship each week. We open the bible, we work on a text, we let it work on us. We come away challenged. Sometimes perplexed. But never bored. This living Word wakes us up from our Wednesday slumber and reminds us that God is big. Bigger, in fact, than we had previously assumed.
Bigger than our sins.
Bigger than our doubts.
Bigger than our control.
Bigger than our crises.
If you have ever looked through a keyhole, you’re beginning to understand. We peek through, supposing we have the full picture of what’s behind 50 lbs of mahogany. What we don’t see we assume isn’t important. Our eyes determine what is paramount. We begin to believe that what is hidden from us does not affect us. What is peripheral is unimportant, we think.
And then we open up the Scriptures. We understand that the keyhole is meant for a key. These words of life open the door. For some, this door has been closed for decades—it screeches and crawls open slowly. But sometimes there is a wind that pushes it agape and we are overwhelmed at what has been before us our whole lives. A flower and a bird seen through a keyhole are just small inhabitants of an entire forest of sequoias. An entire land to explore has been awakened to our souls.
This is the Word.
Alive and active. Even dangerous. It’s not a safe forest. It is wild and big. And yet all we need is found in this place. This wildness is what our souls long for. A tame faith, after all, is no faith at all. Not surprisingly, we are made for this kind of adventure. The bigness of God calls us out of small things. And as we would imagine, his bigness does not make us feel big. Just the opposite—it makes us feel small. But it is a gloriously safe and secure kind of small. A man seeing the Pacific for the first time kind of small; a boy standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon sort of small. The kind of small that reminds us we are fully inadequate to do anything without the sustaining power of God. This same God who rules even the most terrifying beast in his forest moves toward us in our smallness. We don’t shrink from his strength. We embrace it. We don’t bemoan being small when we have full access to this God who is infinitely big.
