Reading

I love to read. I was at the men's bible study last night and was talking to a few people about what we are currently reading. One guy mentioned that one year he tried to tackle 52 books during that year. I am pretty sure that 52 is a pretty normal year for me. I just lose myself in stories sometimes. For the most part, I will read fiction, if I find something or some one that I like. But lately I have been reading more non-fiction stuff. And not just the "spiritual" books that I might mention on here. Like, I read almost all of a book talking about finding the real Ark of the Covenant (almost because while it was good, it was a lot to digest). Or, I will read about baseball, because even God loves baseball. Right now, I am taking on A Year Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs. Its interesting that an agnostic would try and follow all the rules of the bible. I think that when he wrote them all down he had like 72 pages. I haven't gotten very far, but there was a few points that I have already read that make me pause and think about my own personal experiences and even one thing that really challenges me.

Jacobs talks about praying and how it is rather difficult for him to do that. First, he doesn't believe in God and thus praying to God makes little sense. However, he feels that prayer is a major part of the whole bible thing and its commanded quite a few times in the OT. So, he starts by praying passages from the bible. I don't know about you, but I seldom do that. It makes me see how simple prayer can be, but also how relevant the bible still is to our lives. Jacobs prays a passage from Psalms 63:1 that says:

O God, thou art my God, I seek thee,
my soul thirsts for thee;
my flesh faints for thee,
as in a dry and weary land where no water is.

And he sees the beauty of the metaphors and the powerful images that they invoke. Praying the Psalms is something that I have heard before, and when confronted with passages like this, we can definitely see how it can gives us just the right way to express ourselves.

Another thing that Jacobs talks about struggling with is lying. He talks about how he never realized how often he lies. He keeps a list with him of all the times that he lies during a day. How hard would that be to look at? And this goes along with the next thing that just really amazed me that Jacobs was doing it. He was very careful about the words that he uses. He said that he purposefully had started to slow down his speech to make sure that he wasn't breaking any of the rules (sinning). We often forget exactly how powerful our words can be. We speak and let what comes out come out. How beneficial would it be for us to purposefully choose what we say? Before we even say a word, we think about what is coming out of our mouth. Thats what we are supposed to do, right?

Thats where I am being challenged. Am I taking stock of the words that I use on a normal basis? I probably won't be speaking any slower and I don't think its possible to speak any softer, but its something to dwell in my mind as I live in this world.

I am sure that I will have other things that hit me before this book is over and I am sure that you will be tired of it as well. But thats all I have for now.