God uses broken bats to hit home runs.

I love reading the bible. Reading the bible is not the same as studying the bible. I think we should do both, but here’s the difference: we tend to study the Bible to get nuggets of truth, but reading it gets you into the lives of the people. These are real people in real stories with real issues trying to live out a real faith. It takes you deep into the struggles of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the faith. They are all straining towards the love, grace, and truth of God as they wade through the swamp of sinful predisposition. They wage war against inner and outer darkness, sometimes losing. They press toward heaven feeling the gravitas of failure. Can you relate? A few examples who made the ‘most righteous’ list in the Bible are:

Judah, the most righteous of the patriarchs of the twelve tribes of Israel, in a moment of weakness, sleeps with his disguised daughter-in-law (thinking she is a prostitute) and gets her pregnant. Yeah…not making it up…it’s in there (Genesis 38:12-30)

Abraham, called the ‘father of our faith’ lies about being married to his wife to save his skin and is willing to give her to another man…twice! Genesis 12 and Genesis 20.

David, the ‘man after God’s own heart’ commits adultery and has the woman’s husband killed (2 Samuel 11).

Peter, the leader among the apostles of Christ, denied even knowing Jesus (John 18:15-27).

John the Baptist, whom Jesus described as the greatest of men, doubted whether Jesus was really the Messiah before he was beheaded (Matthew 11:3).

I could write about so many more: Job, Elijah, Jeremiah, all the rest of the disciples/apostles, Rahab, Samson….on and on.

I am not deeply affected and my soul is not shaped by looking for little nuggets and sound bytes. I do it by reading, thinking, and reflecting on my own experience in light of theirs (1 Corinthians 10:11).

Reading the bible is encouraging to me because I connect with real, historical, fallible people. We all have a dark side and we must wage war against it. We who belong to Christ have a deep longing for holiness, affected and disrupted at times by our own darker and sinister desires that war against our souls (1 Peter 2:11).

I guess what I’m trying to say is: don’t just study the Bible, read it. See your reflection in the struggles of the patriarchs and try to learn from their mistakes. Take comfort in the fact that God uses broken bats to hit home runs!