Ok. Are you ready? I’ve a confession to make. I’m an addict. There. It’s out there. No more hiding it away, it’s in the open. What, you might be asking, am I addicted to? Well, my addiction is this…
I’m addicted to books. Always have been and always will be. Scouring second hand bookshops, on first name terms with library staff, fiction and non-fiction. No journey undertaken without at least two or three in hand! Fortunately, my wife is ok with this addiction; she’s an ex-bookseller!
Books have had a significant impact on my life. They may have had on yours too. Books can even change lives. I’ve just been re-reading ‘Through Gates of Splendour’, by Elizabeth Elliott, which I first read as a young teenager. It’s the true story of five missionaries who were killed by South American Indians in the jungle of Ecuador, trying to bring the Gospel to them. What caught my imagination was one of the men, Nate Saint, was a pilot. He flew his tiny aircraft around the jungle, soaring over trees and landing on sandbars in the wide river. It was seat-of-the-pants stuff. So, as a youngster, I decided I wanted to be a pilot too, perhaps even a missionary pilot! Well. I never became either, but I got close!
But the one book that has changed my life more than anything else, and has I think changed more lives than any other book throughout history is the Bible. And it’s still changing lives today!
You probably have a number of Bibles at home. Have you ever tried to get rid of an old bible? Recently I decided to do just that. I decided to take my tattered Bible to the charity shop. ‘No thanks’, they said, ‘we’ve plenty of those already.’ I tried a few more with no success. I brought my old Bible home. Do I recycle it? Could I bring myself to put it in the recycling bin! I stood with the lid open; saying to myself ‘It’s just paper’ and then ‘no! It’s not just paper!’ I couldn’t do it! For here’s a book that has blessed me, provided comfort in difficult times, challenged me when I’ve been complacent, my heart stirred by sublime poetry, amazing stories, enthralled by Jesus, God at work in its pages, impacting life today. It’s not so much the words, they’re just ink of a page. It’s that as we read, we invite the Spirit to bring these words to life, resurrecting them from the page, making them not dead words but words that are resurrection-alive with power to breathe new life into us. These are the words of God that tell us about the One True Word – Jesus.
In Ezekiel (there’s a challenging book!), the prophet is given a scroll by an angel with words from God written on it. The angel commands him, ‘Eat this scroll.’ In other words, feed on it, take it in, allow it to nourish you, digest it, chew over it.
On Sunday we’re going to think about how we feed on the word, how, in the words of Ezekiel, we eat this book!
Steve