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BY CHRIS OWENS

I was almost 18 years old when I came into the church, and shortly after that I began to seriously read the Bible. That dusty, boring, old-fashioned church book I had always assumed the Bible to be was anything but that. I vividly remember my first impressions.

There, in the pages of Scripture, were the rugged contours of human life with God and God’s covenant relationship with Israel and the Church. That holy exchange pushed the limits of words and expression to create an explosive bouquet of narrative accounts, mythic tales, epic stories, poems, bitingly prophetic pronouncements, personal letters, wise maxims, and larger-than-life visions of a hopeful future. The Bible left me stunned at its freshness, power and relevancy. I wanted my life to become part of this holy story.

Twenty years later, even with a seminary degree and an ordination under my belt, I still feel the same way whenever I allow the Holy Spirit to lead me into the Bible. But let’s be honest. We are far removed from the culture, languages and some of the values portrayed in the Bible. And yes, those differences lead to faithfully tense conversations with the text even flat-out rejections.

Even then, the Bible opens us to the human experiences of being chosen, loved and redeemed by God. Through those experiences, the Holy Spirit reveals the truth of God as God’s living Word. God’s living Word points us directly to the Word of God made flesh: Jesus Christ.

Yet far too often, we tend to limit the Bible to one of three things: a rule book, a story book, or a self-help book. Indeed, the Bible is all of those things on a much deeper level. The Bible is “a lamp for my feet and a light on my path” (Psalm 139:105). It preserves narratives written “that you may believe…and that by believing you may have life…” (John 20:31). And the words of Scripture show how to prosper because they “are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 3:15). But reading the Bible offers so much more.

Reading the Bible is an act of immersion into God’s truth, not just a gleaning of it. The Holy Spirit plops us right into the middle of God’s story with Israel, Jesus Christ and the Church and invites us to claim it as our own story of birth, faith, struggle and redemption. That opens our hearts to the way, the truth and the life of God in Christ Jesus. We discover that the Scriptures do indeed “containeth all things necessary to salvation” as our United Methodist Articles of Religion say. And that is why reading and searching the Scriptures has always been – and still is today – an irreplaceable means of God’s grace.

Rev. Chris Owens is pastor of First UMC in Laurel.