Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-188

TWO WAYS OF READING THE BIBLE

From ‘Sunrise Sunset’ (HarperCollins/Harper San Francisco), Rowland Croucher’s book of daily meditations. Feel free to use or adapt it.

Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long. Psalm 119:97.

There are two ways, broadly speaking, we can read the Bible: ‘Bible study’ and lectio divina. In Bible study we mainly use our head; in lectio divina, our heart. Bible study is reading the Bible for doctrine; lectio divina is reading the Bible for holiness.

Bible study may degenerate into purely ‘reading for information’; lectio divina is ‘reading for transformation’. In Bible study there is a tendency to be over the Word, as a critic of the Bible text; in lectio divina we are under the Word: it becomes our critic! Lectio divina is a Latin phrase from the 4th or 5th centuries which means, literally, ‘sacred reading’. It involves ‘reading, meditating, praying’ or, in Latin, lectio, meditatio, oratio.

Margaret Hebblethwaite (Finding God in All Things, Collins: Fount Paperbacks, 1987/1990) writes: ‘Choose a passage from Scripture… Read it slowly and reverently… This is the lectio. As you come to a phrase that touches you in some way, stop, repeat it over and over. Let [these words] sink into your subconscious. This is the meditatio… ‘When you have dwelt on the phrase for a while, let prayer arise out of you… In some way you gather up what is going on within you and direct it towards God in prayer. This is the oratio.’ (pp. 92 ff).

Lord, help me to use both heart and head in reading your Word in Scripture: may I be transformed as well as informed by it. Amen.

Shalom! Rowland Croucher <> Director, John Mark Ministries: counseling and consulting services for pastors, ex-pastors, church leaders and managers. http://jmm.aaa.net.au (5300+ articles) http://priscillasfriends.org/ (Pastors’ wives)

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