Read, Listen, Learn, Grow

 Good morning !!

 Thanks for joining me in today’s thought.

 I don’t know about you, but there are parts of the Bible which for me have over the years continued to be somewhat mysterious and not well-understood.  There are entire books of the Bible that I know very little about, even decades after professing my Christian faith.  If you are a Christian, you also probably have parts of the Bible that you don’t understand and couldn’t discuss with any measure of intelligence.

For me, books like Ezekiel, II Peter, and one or two of the Minor Prophets remain mostly a mystery to me.  I’ve studied Revelation rather thoroughly, and although there are many places in that writing that I still don’t understand, at least I think I get the overall viewpoint of the book.  The same goes for most of the prophetic Old Testament books, with one or two exceptions.

Most of us have avoided the Song of Songs all together and have only snippets of knowledge of the Proverbs and the Psalms.  Job can be on the difficult side of the spectrum, and the book of Hebrews is sometimes an issue for some.

As part of what I do at the church, I plan the adult class curriculum.  I’m working now on 2024, and have penciled in the books of Ezekiel and Daniel along with a couple books out of the New Testament for study during the first six or so months of the year.  I’ve found teachers for the New Testament books, but they are few and far between for the Old Testament books.  It seems that Ezekiel and Daniel aren’t on many people’s favorite reading list.

Nor are they on my list.  I know very little about Ezekiel, with the strange visions that are described in the book along with some of the, well, let’s face it…weird…things Ezekiel says he did to get his message across to the people.  Daniel is fairly straightforward until the latter part of the book, again with visions that seem to be really strange and have been subjects of many and varied forms of interpretation over the centuries.

So, facing a dearth of teachers willing to take on these two books, and not knowing much about them myself…especially Ezekiel, I decided to teach the Ezekiel class myself.  I often will do this as a way to learn a part of the Bible story about which I know little.  I am forced to dig in to the book…its history, the characters in it, how it fits with the rest of the Bible story, and the lessons for us today.  This is going to be something that will consume a lot of my time in the next several weeks, but in the end will be well worth it.  And hopefully, I’ll be able to convey what I’ve learned to those in the class so they too will be better informed about a book in the Bible that many avoid.

I say all of that to ask you some questions.  What do you do when you run up against something you know little about, but really need to know more?  Do you think of all of the work that will be necessary to learn about it and decide to procrastinate…put it off indefinitely?  Or do you decide you’re going to, so to speak, tackle it and learn as much as possible about it?  Does learning new things engage you or inspire you in any way?  Or do you consider the whole thing to be some kind of drudgery that has to be done for one reason or another?

It seems to me that considering learning new things to be drudgery…done only because of necessity…betrays a general attitude of indifference, willing ignorance, and laziness.  Regardless of one’s age, I would think that to continue to learn and grow in thought and knowledge would be a mark of one who values life and the incredible opportunities one has in life.

So, just because you at times are thinking that the world is passing you by, or that you are no longer relevant…and, by the way, all of us who are older think those things from time to time…don’t let those thoughts take hold.  Keep your mind active.  Read.  Listen.  Learn.  Grow.  It’s some of the best medicine we can take.

 

Blessings.