God’s Word grows more precious to me as I race toward life’s finish line. We’ve been picking ‘em up and laying ‘em down for quite a while now. Our challenge is to finish strong. To stay centered on Jesus hasn’t grown easier with age. Temptations to revert to self-help and to experiment with another fail-safe remedy to human foibles continue to catch our eye. We have no more experience living in our seventh decade than we did processing life in our teens.
We desire to be forward-looking and relevant without succumbing to pop religion, the art of chasing spiritual fads. We have learned that God’s Word is the sole anchor of life. We can quote Saint Paul, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17). I must ask, "How is the inspiration, effectiveness and truth of the Bible impacting my life today?"
While preparing a plan for spiritual growth in 2013 I remembered that I haven’t consistently read the King James Version of the Bible since the great church debates of the 60's and 70's. "The ‘original King James’ was good enough for the apostles and it’s good enough for me," was the weightiest argument most of us heard. The Christian faith would result in a smashing collision if remote references in newer translations were left uncorrected. In the early 70's I started preaching from the New International Version because the language was easier to understand. The likelihood of people reading the newer translation was greater. My marked and tattered King James Bible was placed on an honored shelf until yesterday when I began reading it again. The schedule I adopted will allow me to complete the journey by March 30.
But, I may not keep the pace. The quaint "thee," "thou" and "thy" slow me down. I am stopping to muse more than I thought I would. Instead of inserting truth with hypodermic needle force, my heart is marinating truth. The truth presented used to be standard fare, but is new again. I am finding that "don’t" simply doesn’t have the same punch as "shalt not!" I slowed down to a one-word-at-a-time reading crawl in Genesis 16 this morning. I was arrested with "Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai." My usual translation reads, "Abram agreed . . ." "Hearken" drips into my soul. "Agreed" fails to stir the same sense of loss resulting from the unholy collaboration.
The reading template calls for reading five Psalms and one chapter of Proverbs in addition to the 15 pages between Genesis and Revelation. It is a special treat to revisit Psalm One in the language of my youth, the version I memorized while an elementary school student. As I read, I heard the Psalm Two lyrics of the baritone’s aria in Handel’s Messiah. Psalm 23 is on the schedule for January 5. Life is refined as God’s Word has time to soak in, marinate, ooze thoroughly into the pores of the soul where faith matures.
I am preaching Sunday. I can’t wait! I’ll be reading Isaiah 40 in the New International Version. The hills made low and low places being lifted in the text are being evened out in my spirit as I read a version of the Bible that is as welcome as a conversation with a friend from whom I have been separated for a long time.
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