READING THE BOOK--1
In a world of momentary devices and bloated pleasures, I'm glad we have the Bible.  In this world where concrete cracks and the past disintegrates and souls are abandoned, I'm glad there is the Bible.

  It has remained as it is for centuries, since it was written before it could be altered.  As books go, it is rare.
  The Bible is the only book I know of with four viewpoints--God speaking to God, God speaking to men and women, and men and women speaking to each other.  It is the only book in which God reveals His presence  to conceal His essence.

  The best help in reading the Bible is itself, as it always has the answers for which the reader seeks.  It is written in Hebrew and Greek.  The only ancient languages which produced a grammar and vocabulary list are--you guessed it--Hebrew and Greek.

  The perfect language to contain the thought that God is one who acts is Hebrew, since it is a language of action, not contemplation.  A fine example is Psalm 127--
  Unless the Lord build the house,
  they labor in vain who build it...
The perfect language to convey that God is with us is Greek with its' many prepositions.  For instance, in Ephesians 1--
  You were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise...
If you've never read the Bible before, it is best to read about 15 minutes every day but Sunday.  It is very good to take notes in a journal.  The best way to understand the Bible is to begin in January, reading from Genesis to Revelation.  I did this three years in a row, and I found out that the Bible si not as large as it looks.  It contains the same few messages, told over and over by many people in different centuries, but the same message.

  Thinking about what you're reading is better than memorizing what you read.  The Bible is unique in that each time you read it, more of it is revealed to you.  It is not flat like best-selling fiction; it is not for the scholar only like most philosophy; it was written by ordinary people taken into extraordinary circumstances.  The Bible utilizes your imagination, your feelings, your thoughts, and your good sense of what people are like.

  Let's imagine an ancient man sitting at the door of his tent, watching the stars at night.  Looking up, he writes--
  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
If that man were to sit there beneath the stars, the furthest circumstance of his sight and imagination would be the heavens.  As if he could scribe a circle with his finger with himself as the center, the circle would be the heavens, the stars, the boundless deep purple above his head.  He has circled his outward boundary--the heavens--and the center--the earth.

  Genesis 1 is about filling in that circumference with stars, the sun, the planets, birds, fish and animals.  That is the circumference from the sky down to the earth, culminating in a man and a woman.  The universe around us, ourselves within it as the center.

  Genesis 2 is about that man and woman on the earth, to take care of it and to take care of themselves.

  In Genesis 3 Adam and Eve are in the middle of the earth, the Garden of God.  There a serpent talks.  He tells Adam and Eve a lie about God.  Now the Garden has changed from bower to danger.  Adam and Eve have to leave, to go down to a plain in which change can occur.  Without change, Adam could never be released from the curse of disobeying God.  So leaving the Garden was an act of grace by God for Adam's descendants to be released from the curse.  The first Adam could become the second Adam, Jesus of Nazareth, who did not believe the serpent's lie.

  All of this is told in language which is simple yet spoken in pavilions of thought.

  The rest of the Bible is the story of the family of Adam, to which we relate through generation, to the family of Jesus the second Adam, to which we relate through regeneration.

Part Two will be next week...