© Claudia McFie, May 2015
I pull down the walls,
throw my mask away,
Open and broken
but no longer afraid,
To soak in your love,
to know your embrace
I will see you.
Higher and deeper
I will seek your face
Into the Holy of Holies
you opened the way
Your word stands true
when this world falls away
I will see you.
Father and King,
we meet face to face,
Lover and Friend,
in this cool of the day
Here in this garden
you call out my name,
I will see you.
When I went to work on my new book, I thought the counter-cultural bit was asking 21st century Christians to learn from a 12th century monk. I had no idea that the biggest stretch would be the invitation in the first part of the title: Love Your Bible! Alas, many do not.
There are lots of reasons loving the Bible seems like a stretch today.
Many of us are under such constant pressure between work and family that opening the Bible just doesn’t come to mind.
Many have spent years following Christ, whom we know in our hearts; we just haven’t picked up the habit of Bible reading.
Still others are put off by a book written thousands of years ago in distant cultures and foreign languages.
And those who want to ask hard questions and wrestle with answers dislike the superficial way many Christians do read the Bible.
Is it surprising that the people who find it hard to love their Bible are real Christians, people who follow Jesus with passion? Surprising or not, it is a loss--a crippling loss that keeps us from flourishing as disciples.
It is not that we need to know the Scriptures so we can have snappy answers to the world’s pressing questions. Knowing the Bible does help you understand your faith and the good news that needs to be shared. But I’m talking about something deeper.
The Bible is not given to us as an answer book or a user’s manual. The Bible is intended to lead us into the presence of the living God.
So here’s the risk: if we don’t find a way into the Bible, we may not find our way into God’s life-giving presence. We may end up following a figment of our imaginations, or a projection of our own neuroses.
We need the real God who so loves the world, the same God who called Abraham and Sarah, and who came in person in Jesus. His words and acts have been preserved for us in Scripture. His Spirit is whispering there still.
What we need is a faithful guide who knows the way.
In Love Your Bible I suggest a 12th century monk as that guide: a fellow named Guigo, who wrote the go-to book on the ancient Christian practice of lectio divina or “divine reading.”
You may have heard of lectio divina. Lots of Christians are exploring classic approaches to spiritual disciplines these days (I recommend ten of them in my earlier book Kneeling with Giants: Learning to Pray with History’s best Teachers).
Commonly lectio divina is presented as a group process in which a text is read aloud three or four times and people listen for words and phrases that jump out evocatively. That can be helpful, but it is a far cry from the classic form of the practice.
Guigo teaches a much more serious practice. Joyful, prayerful, gentle--but fully engaged. It starts with careful study of a biblical text, and moves with the text through meditation and prayer to the very presence of God.
Guigo didn’t invent lectio divina. By the time he wrote, Christians had been honing the practice for centuries. Monks were instructed to spend a couple of hours a day at it.
Every day they encountered the Bible in ways that were intellectually rigorous and spiritually engaged.
Every day they went from the text of Scripture into the presence of the living God.
It shaped their minds to the Gospel--often when you read the writings of medieval monks they are virtually a patchwork of biblical quotations.
And it shaped their hearts and their lives. Dwelling with God through Scripture turned monks into the missionaries and leaders that spread the faith across Europe.
Lord knows, we need to drink deeply from those living waters today.
Lord knows the world needs a new generation of disciples formed by the Word and empowered by his presence.
I hope you’ll give classic lectio divina a try. Isn’t it time to find a way to Love Your Bible?
You can get a free copy of the eBook at my blog by clicking here, or you can get the paperback at Amazon.com or The Book Depository.
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Giveaway!
Gary has kindly offered a free paperback of Love Your Bible to one of my readers. To enter: comment on this post with your experiences of Bible Reading in the past and how it affected your life and faith. Winner will be selected randomly from the comments on 10 May 2015.
The lies are telling me I’m unimportant and insignificant.
At least I’m pretty sure they’re lies.
I think they might be lies.
I hope they’re lies.
It’s getting harder to resist the discouragement. The lies are getting more subtle – where they used to be things that were blatantly untrue, now they are twisting and distorting the might-be-trues and even some actually-did-happens. A thought will trigger a knife twisting kind of emotion. It takes all my effort to not let the emotion drag me down and to refute the trigger-thought.
I know how to fight this: it takes prayer, thanksgiving, praise and worship.
I had overlooked one thing: the support, prayer and encouragement of other believers. When I could no longer stand on my own, I sent out a prayer request email. What took me so long? The best weapon in the battle against discouragement in encouragement.
I’m not yet 100% better, but the intensity has reduced. I no longer stand alone, for I know now there are others standing with me. And that makes all the difference.
I've been trying to figure out what I could DO for God.
Every time I find something I can do to serve Him I start thinking "maybe this is it, maybe this is how God will use me," then when things don't work out the way I hoped I'd decide that isn't how God wants to use me after all and start looking around for something else I can do.
Over the last while, I've been having constant battles with the "I'm not good enough" feelings whenever I'm reminded of these kinds of disappointments. While I know in my head that "I'm not good enough" isn't true, I'm still feeling the emotions triggered by that thought no matter how hard I try to convince myself.
So what I'm in the process of realising, is that with all the energy and effort I'm putting into trying to find something I can be "good enough" at to serve God with, my energy and focus is on myself and what I can or can't do.
My attention has turned away from Him.
God said to me last week:
Look at me and know you are loved.
This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice for our sins.
The night he was betrayed, Jesus said, "No one has greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends"
This is how much you are loved: God through Jesus died for you.
He says: Look at me and know you are loved.
His love is eternal and unchanging.
My finite mind can grasp only a small portion of the infinity of His love.
But as I contemplate His love for me, my heart responds with growing Love for Him.
As I sit still and let his love flow over me, it can begin to flow through me into my love for others.
This is what Jesus commanded: Love God and love one another.
He says: Look at me and know you are loved.
There's an old song from last century: “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”
A more modern song: “When the music fades, and all is stripped away, and I simply come”... and goes on to: “I'm coming back to the heart of worship, and it's all about you Lord.”
I've been a Christian 25 years so far and I'm still in the process of learning this. It may be that I'll spend the rest of my life still in the process of learning this.
What he says to me, perhaps he's saying to you: Look at me, and know you are loved.
Let that love flow over you, surround you and embrace you.
Receive that love, and respond with your love to him.
Four years ago, on this day and at this hour, I was running for my life dodging a three storey masonry facade toppling towards me.
This last year has had a few ups and downs, but generally I've been "coping" by using the Five Ways of Wellbeing: Connect, Give, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Be Active.
These last two weeks have "gone to custard" however.
We've been having the repairs done to our house. They were only very minor repairs so we didn't need to move out like so many others have had to do. There's still been a bit a lot of extra stress with having to pack up some loose books and toys, and move furniture out from the walls. I've also found it harder than I expected to having tradespeople in my personal space.
I've also got out of routine with several of those wellbeing things. I couldn't go for my run when I usually do because I couldn't shower afterwards because there were painters working on the bathroom ceiling. I couldn't practice my music when I normally would because there was a worker sanding down the doorframe of my bedroom with a radio playing.
On top of this, I've been feeling rather vulnerable from triggered emotions from this stuff last week.
So when the voice of discouragement reminded me off a particular disappointment a couple of days ago, I couldn't fight it off the way I usually try to do. I just had to let myself curl up and have a good cry over it, even though I knew the emotion was out of proportion to the cause.
It's Lent, but I don't have the strength to observe a fast this year.
(Has there ever been any actual scientific double-blind type studies done on the anti-depressant effects of dark chocolate? If not, could the placebo effect still be enough to justify postponing my fast for medicinal reasons?)
About this time last year, I started writing a prayer-poem, that grew into this song:
Yes, this time and place too, this is also Holy Ground.
I’m writing this at midnight. For the second night in a row I’m having trouble getting to sleep.
Earlier in the week, I was reading on my Facebook newsfeed several reviews and comments about a certain book recently made into a movie. I haven’t read the books or seen the movie. I really don’t want to, based on what I’ve read here, here, here, here and here. The recurring theme of these reviews was concern at the depiction of a manipulative, controlling and abusive relationship as romantic love. I find myself feeling sick in the stomach, and memories are churning in my head from a part of my past that not even many of my close friends know much about.
I was a 20 year old undergraduate student. He was several years older, doing a post graduate degree in the same department. He was tall, dark, handsome, strong, charming and attractive. about three months after we met, he asked me to marry him. My gut reaction was “No! No! No!”. He was not, however, willing to accept No for an answer. It took him nine more months of persuasive manipulation and charm before I finally agreed to go out with him.
I realised very quickly I had made a big mistake. He didn’t physically abuse me, but from what I have learned since about the early warning signs of an abusive relationship, it would have only been a matter of time. He very persuasively told me he loved me, but this was not love. This was control on his part and fear on mine.
“There is no fear in love.” 1 John 4:18 (NIV)
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NIV)
He was impatient and unkind. He was jealous, arrogant, boastful. He belittled me, was selfish, and frequently angry. He blamed me for anything that didn’t go his way, and brought it back out to hold against me at other times. He threatened me with violence and rape, at the same time told me I was unattractive and mocked me.
This was NOT love.
Even after I ended the relationship, he would still not take No for an answer. For another year he alternated between being persuasive and charming, and begging me to take him back, to being intimidating and threatening. It took intervention from the university authorities to convince him to stop talking to me.
But it was not yet over. I still saw him frequently around campus, and although he didn’t speak to me he looked at me threateningly. I swallowed fear whenever I attended class. On finding him on the same bus I would get off three stops past my street, and walk home via a very circuitous route so he wouldn’t find out where I lived.
It took another six months before I could see him without feeling the fear. I looked him in the eye, said hello, commented on the weather, then very firmly ended the conversation. His power over me was finally broken, and the next time I saw him he turned away to avoid me. I had won my freedom, but at an emotional cost over previous the two and a half years. I experienced depression for several months, and I did not complete my degree.
“Perfect love drives out fear” 1 John 4:18 (NIV).
I later learned what it was to be loved. This weekend was our wedding anniversary. 18 years ago I married a man who was patient and kind, who wasn’t jealous or arrogant or proud. He wasn’t rude or selfish or angry. He was forgiving, caring, protecting and trusting. This was Real Love.
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV)
P.S. If you find that the relationship you are in shows the signs of power, control and possessiveness that are warning signs, or if you are in an abusive relationship, then please be very careful and stay safe. I’ve read that the most dangerous time for a women in an abusive relationship is when she has decided to leave. Sophie Elliot’s story is a tragic example of this. Talk to someone you can trust. Get help from an organisation like Women’s Refuge. If you are in physical danger, contact the police (even if you have to pretend to be ordering pizza to do so).
