Day 35: Scripture and People

Thank you, God, for Scripture.

I’ve surely shared something about Scripture in the past 30-plus days. And at this point, I’ve tried to type today’s gratitude entry more times than I want to admit. Scripture is amazing. Something about starting off a post with, “Thank you, God, for Scripture,” has me wanting to write multiple pages of my ramblings.

Needless to say, I could go on and on about why Scripture is awesome—what it contains, what it can do, why it’s important, who it’s for, who it’s about, how to read it, and how to apply it. In fact, I almost did—pages of it.

But that’s not my particular gratitude today. This is how I’ve slowed my mind down. Yes, Scripture is awesome, but why did it pop into my head to share my thankfulness today?

I think part of it is that gratitude has made me pay attention to things that often get overlooked. And by “overlooked,” I mean in more subtle, even nefarious ways. I say overlooked because I’m just like you. Today, I think my gratitude had to overcome some of the negativity that often surrounds the Bible, the Church, and people. I’ll let your own negativity fill in the blanks—I’m past that for the moment.

I’m thankful for Scripture today because my excitement for people who are interested in the Bible surpasses anything that could derail the conversation.

Over the past few days, I’ve noticed more people talking about getting into reading their Bibles. Just today, I had a conversation with someone trying to dive deeper into Scripture. Last night, I heard what I’d call a testimonial—someone sharing the joy of exploring God’s Word on their own, for the sake of their family. Every Wednesday Bible study, people show up with their questions. So, we have folks studying the Bible both individually and collectively. That is a good, great, and wonderful thing.

This is what I’m thankful for today: that instead of believing the negativity, I know people are trying. And I believe trying is the most important thing—because if you think you’ve mastered it, you’re wrong.

We’re going to keep trying. We’re going to try as individuals and in groups. We’re going to try by reading Scripture, and we’re going to try by sharing Scripture. We’re going to try by living Scripture.

We’re going to keep trying.

(Here is the area that is now deleted that I was going to share the challenges as I see them. Challenges about getting more people to read scripture. Challenges about how we read scripture currently versus how maybe we should read scripture. However, that doesn't necessarily fit within the gratitude.)

Where do you see people growing in faith?