a good book

I bought a new Bible

I wouldn’t call myself religious really. I did, however, grow up in the Nazarene Church, attending Sunday school, vacation Bible school, & Church camp. I once witnessed a baptism in the Lake of the Ozarks, where I grew up, when I was about 8 or 9 years old. It seriously scared me out of my mind. I saw a pastor half-drowning one of the faithful only to pull him from the murky water in the nick of time, with him gasping for air. Of course, that is not what baptism is about at all, but in the eyes of a child, without someone there to explain the details too me, it was pretty scary! Then, at some point after that we left the Church. Maybe around the time my parents got a divorce. Back then, in a small town, divorce was look down upon more so than it is today. Years later my Mom’s live-in boyfriend, Don, would watch a Church program on TV. I joined him and for 30 minutes every Sunday morning The Worldwide Church of God became our Church. Preaching from somewhere on a sound stage the pastor taught a lot from the book of Revelation. I remember the doomsday part (the Apocalypse, the four horsemen, death, plagues, destruction, famine, end of time, locust) but not so much about the great day that Jesus Christ would return to Earth. At that time I started to read the Bible. It was the New King James Version that I had won from the Church my Aunt Marilyn attended. I got lost in the language; too much “hath”, “thou”, and “shalt”. I stopped somewhere in Exodus. Don turned out to be a complete nut-job and Mom kicked him out (that’s another blog for another day). Mom turned the TV Church off. I moved to Denver and it was 19 years before I would return to the Church looking for a purpose.

So why read the Bible now? I have always been fascinated with theology, especially religions other than Christianity. I am not even sure why that is. Lately I have been bombarded with articles, TV shows and web-articles related to the subject. “Why Americans are non-religious”, “The Deleted Books of the Bible”, “Read the Bible in 90 Day”, etc. I find myself drawn to watching and reading. Is someone trying to tell me something? Like I said before, I came back to the Church looking for purpose. I guess I am still looking for a purpose and meaning to it all. So, partly out of obligation (because every Sunday our Pastor asks his congregation to bring their Bible to Church and read from scripture) and partly out of actually wanting to read the Bible, I bought The New Living Translation One Year Bible. It’s easy to read in plain-modern-English so I won’t get lost in the language and is designed (with daily readings) to finish the Old Testament in 1 year. So, here I am 3 days into reading the Bible, only 362 days to go…  I will keep an open-mind and will stay open to the possibility that this is more than a “good book”. I will keep you posted in my journey of discovery and I welcome your feedback and experiences reading the Bible too. I hope I read more than Genesis and  Exodus this time…and I pray that it is more than “a good book”.