Faith & Family
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
2 Timothy 2:15 I’ve had my nose in a new book for a couple of weeks by an author I’d never heard of before. It had been sitting on a shelf in Coralville, Iowa, at a consignment shop where I’d been browsing with friends, and I picked it up figuring its pretty cover and placement in the Religious Section indicated content I would surely enjoy. But the more I dig in, the more I see how different it is from things I usually read. At the moment, I’m still flipping through it—glossing over the foul language here and there and still somewhat confounded by the publisher’s decision to print the text in sky blue—on a mission that’s always twofold concerning anything I take time to read: potentially better myself in some way, and polish my own craft as a writer.
I’m not going to tell you the book’s title or even the author’s name as that isn’t information relevant to my point (and, anyway, I think we should always have liberty to draw our own conclusions, not base them off somebody else’s), but it’s definitely true that I struggled at first with settling into the story’s rhythm. Initially the book’s tone felt all over the place to me, so much that it’s been hard telling a lot of the time where the writer actually stands with God—I keep finding myself wondering, Okay, is this woman on Team Christian, or not? Just a couple of paragraphs in I’d already deemed this book in fact NOT religious and maybe a better fit for the Miscellaneous or Weirdo Section.
It’s simply written in a style I’m personally not used to reading. (For that matter, I tend to prefer straightforward, humorous books, like those written by Lauren Graham or Jess Johnston.)
But I think it was around chapter three when things turned a pleasant corner. Determined to read the whole book and not throw in the towel just because a couple of sections and word choices made me uncomfortable, I noticed that I had essentially become accustomed to the author’s process: she writes very bluntly, and uses phrasing (a.k.a. big words) I have to repeatedly chew over in order to make it make sense. As she recalled hilarious tales of pettiness concerning a woman she butted heads with when her son was young, this particular chapter even made me laugh.
Growing up, I heard over and over that the Bible is presented at a level even a kid can digest. This honestly— though I was that girl who constantly had a book in her hands—had a way of making me feel like maybe my reading ability was lacking. So I guess this is a me thing; I’m the problem. Evidently there’s no reason for me to be confused by God’s Word.
But, holy moly, I was—and today I often still am. (A subtitle for this article might be, The One Where She Gets Vulnerable.) When a person is constantly encountering what should be a perfectly discernable word, only to learn in that week’s Bible Study that it doesn’t actually mean what you thought and in fact has four other potential definitions (depending on the dictionary you choose to use), I’m compelled to think perhaps it’s at least warranted anytime I’ve failed to comprehend something in Scripture.
But what if—just like when we read other books—it’s more a matter of giving the situation time and simply adjusting to the Bible’s cadence? If a few moments during a worship service on Sunday mornings are the only times we spend in the Bible’s pages, I feel like the mystery’s pretty much solved as to why we don’t know half of what it has to say.
In every regard, the Bible is so unique. It may take a bit of effort sometimes to discern its lingo, but there’s scarcely another book that’s worth seeing through.
A resident of McDonough County, Erin Eddy lives in Macomb with her husband, Mike, their five boys, and two zealous Australian Shepherds. She aspires to uplift readers, penning stories of encouragement and everyday life. Her work has been featured on the influential website Her View From Home, as well as the book series Chicken Soup for the Soul. Contact [email protected].
