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From the Pastor’s Desk:

 

The Bible in Seven Words or Less

 

Recently, I was reading one of the magazines that I get (The Christian Century) and one of the articles really made me think.

 

The article was called ‘What is the Bible for?’  What the editors of the magazine did was ask a whole variety of writers to answer this question using seven words or less.  As I read, this article challenged me to think about how I would answer the question.  At first it seems like it would be an easy task, but I found it more difficult than I thought it would be.  After all, how do you summarize this massive collection of writing into a few words.  Additionally, the question is ‘What is the Bible for?’ and not simply a summary of the Bible.

 

The first thought that I had was the acronym I was taught years ago—BIBLE is Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth.  While I think that there is some validity in this acronym, I am not sure that it encompasses all of what the Bible is for.

 

As I thought more and more about this task, I took time to read through what others came up with.  Below are some of the answers given—some I found helpful, others not so much:

 

  • A declaration of dependence (Philip Jenkins)
  • Awakening us to God’s insistent call (Shai Held)
  • Asking questions but not always giving answers (Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder)
  • A library of human encounters with divinity (Barbara Brown Taylor)
  • Providing wisdom about God, life, and love (Jon Mathieu)
  • An invitation to live as God’s love (Isaac S. Villegas)
  • Telling us about people following God (Reggie Williams)
  • Offering latitude and longitude coordinates for life (Grant Wacker)
  • Stirring us to believe in costly love (Peter Marty)
  • Connecting God’s people across millennia through story (Celeste Kennel-Shank)
  • A rip-roaring library to inspire ongoing conversation (Brian McLaren)
  • Showing us God’s grace, love, and salvation (Niveen Ibrahim Sarras)
  • Gathering around stories of encounter with God (Amy Frykholm)
  • Being a word beyond words (Robin Lovin)
  • Telling a story in breath, rhythm, song (Brian Bantum)
  • Expressing God’s longing for relationship with creation (Malka Simkovich)
  • Revealing the character and purpose of God (Samuel Wells)
  • Encountering the Divine through story and thought (Dawn Araujo-Hawkins)
  • Revealing God’s tenacious love for us (Richard Kauffman)
  • Falling into a literary ocean, infinitely deep (Carol Zaleski)
  • Christ’s repair of everything we ruin (Jason Byassee)
  • Encountering God’s grace (M. Craig Barnes)

 

Here is what I came up with:  Teaching us the depth of God’s love—throughout the Bible we hear of God’s continual pursuit to restore His relationship with humanity and his love for all of creation.  All this shows us the depth and magnitude of God’s love for all people and creation.

 

What would your seven words be?