Meditations—points to ponder

In 1916 a young Swiss pastor Karl Barth (30 yo) was just beginning to discover the Bible. He was writing what he had discovered. His book was the first in a procession of books that would convince many Christians that the Bible was giving a truer, more accurate account of what was going on in their seemingly unraveling world than what their politicians and journalists were telling them. [Ed. comment: what’s different in 2017??] 

Barth sought to recover the capacity of Christians to read the Bible receptively in its original, transformative character—he brought the Bible out of academic mothballs 

in which it had been stored for so long. 

He demonstrated how alive it is and how different it is from books that can be ‘handled’ i.e. dissected, analysed and used for whatever we want them for. 

He showed, clearly and persuasively, that this ‘different’ kind of writing 

(revelatory and intimate instead of informational and impersonal) 

must be met by a different kind of reading (receptive and leisurely 

instead of standoffish and efficient). 

He also called attention to writers who had absorbed and continued to write in the biblical style, involving us as readers in life-transforming responses.

For the next fifty years Barth demonstrated the incredible vigor and energy 

radiating from the sentences and stories of the Bible and shows us how to read them. Barth insists that we do not read this book and the subsequent writings 

that are shaped by it in order to find out how to get God into our lives or 

to get Him to participate in our lives … NO!

We open this book and find that page after page it takes us off-guard, 

surprises us and draws us into its reality, pulls us into participation with God 

on His terms. When we open the Bible we enter the totally unfamiliar world 

of God, a world of creation and salvation, stretching endlessly above and beyond us.

Eugene Peterson Eat this Book! the art of spiritual reading pp5-7

Isaiah 55:11 (NRSV) — 11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Jeremiah 15:16 (NRSV) — 16 Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart; for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.