As I begin writing, I have 320 friends in my list here on Facebook. You all represent a wide range of personality traits and achievements as well as beliefs and morals. I like it that way. However, I also know that some of you will not accept the fact that I am commenting on the Bible. That is just fine, and you can choose not to read. I'm okay with that.
The Bible is important to me. It contains the teachings that I have chosen to base my life on. In particular, I am trying to become like the central character of the Bible, that is, Jesus of Nazareth. The story of his life, what he came to accomplish and the sacrifice he made, is laced through the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.
I've been reading and studying the Bible for many years. I've gained a large amount of knowledge gleaned from many wonderful teachers and scholars. Knowledge is important in the Christian's life, but it can also become a distraction. As humans, we have a hard time focusing. There are many things that can distract us. I have found that I can get caught up with filling my head with facts while my heart grows emaciated.
So I came upon a new year. I want to continue to study the Bible, but I also want it to penetrate my heart. I have carried out different methods over the years that have worked well. I've read through the books, often one from the old testament then one from the new testament. I've used various One Year Bibles, getting through the entire scripture in one year with a systematic program. However, I wanted something different this time.
I decided to look at the life of Jesus, and therefore one of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). I zeroed in on Mark. Mark was written for the Roman mindset, with lots of action. It also draws a great deal from the Apostle Peter's first hand accounts of the events that took place.
As I started to read chapter one, a new idea came to me. I love to read fiction, and it has always sort of frustrated me that the Bible's accounts of stories does not have more details filled in. Often I would wish that I knew how someone reacted when the words were spoken, or how they were dressed, or what the weather was like. We don't get that.
But that frustration has led me to approach the Gospel of Mark in a different way. Our modern Bibles have headings before passages that usually logically seem to fit together. In my Bible right before Mark 1:1 it says, "John the Baptist Prepares the Way." Then it goes for 8 verses before there is another heading. We are often told that these titles and the chapter groupings weren't there originally there but added later to make finding sections easier.
I have decided to read one of those sections a day and really think about it, examining the words carefully. I think about all the words used in a verse, and try, with a fiction writer's mind, to ponder the meaning as well as try to fill in some of the gaps. Granted this could lead to some speculation that is totally not true. But it is not my intent to be a heretic. I'm just honestly considering what the words tell me about the mindsets of the people and what they may have been doing.
I'm not even necessarily digging into commentaries as I do this. I've done enough of that in the past, so I have an idea what they say. I've actually been doing this now for seven chapters, and it has been fascinating and very beneficial to me. That's why I'm writing about it. Taking these smaller junks of the scripture and contemplating them has helped me to focus. Surprisingly, too, it has helped me get a better feel for the continuity of this book of the Bible, and put me more in touch with some of the major themes that Mark was trying to get across while telling the story of Jesus at the same time.
I'll wrap up this entry. This is a very long introduction to this, and I sincerely hope that I can keep this up. I'm writing this on a vacation day, so I have more time. But if I were to make any new year's resolutions, which I really have not, this is one that I would like to keep up. Maybe people will read it, and maybe not. That's not really my aim, to gain readers. Writing like this helps to further solidify the things I'm reading.
