I think scripture is one of the best gifts God has given to us to make sense of this world.
Starting in the 80’s, with the introduction of the tape player teenagers and young adults began creating ‘mixtapes’ of personally curated lists of music. You could have mixes for the bus ride before school, love song mixes, break-up mixes and then came the idea of the definitive mix. A set of songs that would define you as a person and allow the listener to peek into the head and heart of its creator.
In my understanding, the Bible is God’s definitive mixtape. We can look at the different books of the Bible to get a taste of who God is. The Bible isn’t one book, but 73 books. There are origin stories, poetry, songs, letters to the early church, books on prophecy and narratives on who Jesus was. Although written a long time ago, God’s mixtape can help understand God and our role in God’s story.
I want to be careful. Although we can derive who Jesus is and who he calls us to live from holy scripture, the Bible is not a magic eightball. Very rarely does flipping to a random page give us a direct answer to our lives questions. Instead, scripture is an invitation to understand who is God, and who we are. To accept that invitation, we need to develop the habit of daily scriptural consumption.
Are you looking for a place to start? Each week in the bulletin, online (usccb.org) and in the seasonal missalette (currently the brown book we have by the doors across from the reconciliation room) the church has prepackaged daily readings. I find that when something is important, I need to schedule it on my calendar. This week I challenge you to get a hold of the daily readings and schedule time for the critical discipline of being in the word.
Praying for you this week,
Fr. Bob
