Bike Riding and Scripture Intake
If you’ve driven around central Richardson, chances are you’ve seen my on my bright orange bike, maybe with a kid or two on the back. We are a one-car family, and I bike for any reasonable commute.
There are a lot of reasons that I love to bike; it gets me outside, allows me to exercise, and generally clears my head. But one effect of biking that I didn’t plan for is that it allows me to know my city more closely than I might when speeding through in a car. Biking causes me to see changes to neighborhoods over time; it allows me to literally feel the contours of the road. Because I bike, I know Richardson differently.
The same can be said of how we traverse scripture -- the vehicle we choose determines how we take in the story. Sometimes I’m speeding through the Bible in a year like the driver of a car. Other times, I’m diving deep with a word study, or memorizing a passage like someone biking or strolling on a sidewalk. When we choose a way of intaking scripture, we also choose how the story will shape us.
There are many ways we can intake God’s word: we can hear it read, hear it preached, or read it aloud to ourselves or in community. We can read it verse by verse, a whole book at a time or through a reading plan; we can participate in light study by reading from various translations side by side or writing verses out verbatim so that we might slow down and see things. We can delve into heavier study, cracking open Bible dictionaries and concordances, consulting original languages, and referencing commentaries. We can even store God’s word up in our hearts through the patient practice of Scripture memory.
If you’re a Christian reading this, chances are I don’t need to sell you on the significance of the word of God — it’s the primary shaper of our understanding of God, the world, and ourselves. God’s word serves as his means of revealing himself to us, and it invites us to respond back to his revelation in prayer. If we want to know God, we need his word. If we want communion with God, we need his word. If we want to be like Jesus, we need his word.
However, I wonder if sometimes we get stuck in one method of scriptural intake, to the overall detriment of our spiritual health. Sure, biking may be my primary way of commuting, but it certainly will not be the vehicle I choose when it’s time to make a visit to my in-laws in Colorado this Christmas!
We ought to vary our forms of Bible intake based on a goal of maintaining an overall spiritual health, a mixed diet which allows for us to accomplish the goals of meeting with God in his word and being shaped to live as his people in the world. This likely means a steady daily diet of Bible intake through reading and hearing God’s word, a weekly diet of preaching, interspersed with seasons of more intense study.
Christian, what does your travel through the story of scripture look like? Are there ways you might make your diet more balanced? As you consider these questions and your schedule for 2020, we hope you’ll consider whether a Mosaic Bible Study might be a helpful supplement to your spiritual rhythms, a place where you can read God’s word in community and grow in your ability to understand and interpret it. We are confident that your time in doing so will be well spent and hopeful that it benefits our entire family in a collective pursuit of the Lord. For women, you can register here. For men, our morning offering is here, and evening offering is here.