Reading Scripture with Patience

By Mandy Smith

This autumn I took my children to the farm. It seemed like the right thing to do in late September when school is in full swing and the slow days of summer are fading into distant memory. The farm we chose had placards throughout to instruct field trip groups about things like composting and spring houses.

As I came upon the first of the signs, I was faced with a decision””to teach my children something or to let them explore. Mostly because of my own tiredness (but partly out of my sympathy for the hours they”d spent on homework that week), I decided to skip the reading and just enjoy the farm with my kids that warm afternoon. So we compared the crows of roosters, worked out how to get corn off a cob, and wandered through a field of sunflowers while looking for the biggest one.

As I watched a school group reading all the signs and filling in all the blanks on their worksheets, I felt a pang of guilt that I wasn”t teaching my children. But then I caught a dreamy look on the face of one child in the school group and I knew he wanted to be feeding the goats with us. At that moment I knew I had made the right choice. We weren”t reading but we were learning””that cows have gentle eyes and that chicken coops smell really bad. We started most of our sentences with “I love . . .” or “I wonder . . .”

I grew up with the field trip approach to studying the Bible””just read and read and read some more. And, obviously, since it”s usually presented in print, reading is undoubtedly central to knowing Scripture. But just because we have read it doesn”t mean we understand it. The churches that received the letters of the New Testament received one copy for the entire congregation. And many of the individuals in those churches were likely illiterate. So getting the message didn”t mean taking it home with you, but hearing it read aloud.

Educators in the classical style know that reading is only part of the learning. Reading is a starting point, but the lesson isn”t done until the reader has also made notes and talked about the reading with others.1

Maybe if we were talking about reading the gossip columns, a quick read would suffice, but since we”re talking about God”s eternal truth, doesn”t it make sense to read and then allow time for it to soak in? As Paul writes in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” And the psalmist says, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11). Letting Christ”s Word dwell in my busy life takes time. So does hiding God”s Word in my cluttered heart.

So I certainly read. But to my reading I have added a freedom to wander, to pause when something catches my attention and just watch it for a while. This means releasing myself from the habit of counting minutes and verses, and being OK with accomplishing less for the sake of finding something deeper, more meaningful, and more practical.

So now I choose one, small, meaningful passage (or it chooses me) and read it every day until it soaks in. Sometimes I draw about it, copy it, listen to it being read, repeat small pieces of it to myself. If I know a song about it, I sometimes sing it. Other times I scrawl it on a chalkboard in my kitchen and just wait to see how it collides with my phone calls and lunch packing.

As it intersects with the realities of the world, it is given a chance to show me the many facets of truth it holds. If I believe God uses both the Bible and the world to reveal himself to his people, I have no fear that the two will contradict each other; but, instead, I strain to hear them singing in harmony.

In this way the Bible is teaching me its power to transform me””that when I approach Scripture slowly, quietly, openly, it will take me to places I had no idea existed and teach me truths that require new categories.

As informative as the placards on the farm were, if we had explored the farm by reading those signs in the allocated order, we would have missed so much and understood according to only one framework. By choosing to be open to nature, we were available for nature”s power to grab us with a sound or a smell and lead us in its own way. I see now it”s fitting that I learned this lesson on a farm because it seems to me farmers understand this patience and humility””the slowness of a seed becoming food, of a cow chewing cud.

The more I study in this way, the more I understand that the problem isn”t God”s Word is too hard for me to understand. The problem is my mind is too busy and my heart is too clogged to embrace his simple truths. This patient way of reading and reflecting doesn”t change his Word but changes me. It doesn”t draw God closer but slows me enough to see he”s already there.

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1Susan Wise Bauer, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2003), 15.

Mandy Smith is associate pastor at University Christian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio. She lives with her professor husband and two children in a little house where the teapot is always warm. Her book Making a Mess and Meeting God: Unruly Ideas and Everyday Experiments for Worship is published by Standard Publishing. (www.standardpub.com/makingamess)