letters vs books... and a few other tidbits:

i can't remember who i was talking to or maybe i was listening to someone talk, but recently the idea of reading the new testament like a letter instead of like a book was introduced to me.  i've read the bible my whole life but up until 3 months ago, it was utterly lifeless to me.  they were words on pages which were meant to be opened on sundays and wednesdays, if you remembered to bring it to church that is, and maybe once or twice during the month when you 'made time' for god during devotions. they were words that made no sense and had no life.  so 3 months ago, this revelation began to cultivate in me:

as usual, i need to bring in some backstory for my revelation to make any sense:

it's been a gnarly adventure these past 6 months for me.

god has been revealing to me that:
he is not asleep, he is not distant, he is not dead.

in this process, god woke me up.

i was talking with my dear friend cory the other night and he didn't understand what i was talking about when i shared with him how through high school, although i grew up christian, i didn't deserve the name christian, "little christ's", until about 3 months ago.  he said that he always thought i was a person of solid faith and in love with jesus.  oh how well of an actor i am. true, i learned many things in high school youth group at theOverflow BUT my heart was blackened so the lessons were not penetrating. they were simply going in and getting filed away nicely.  i was refusing to let god shine light on my sins.  i deemed myself a worthless sinner and didn't "let grace be grace" to redeem me from sin. i related my life to his life.  he grew up in a secular home completely separated from jesus.  it wasn't until our senior year in high school when he accepted jesus's love.  i, on the other had, grew up in a normal christian home.  i went to sunday school and met felt board jesus, sung i am a c-h-r-i-s-t-i-a-n and colored my jesus to resemble a german man.  cory thought that growing up the way i did meant that it was easier to love jesus as i grew up.

SO WRONG.

growing up without jesus and growing up with a jesus who was the same as santa claus both suck.

i had to destroy the years of my fake jesus.

cory had to destroy the years of no jesus.

so ya, sure i have always loved jesus.

but the kind of love i was using was more along the lines of me saying,

"i love ice cream" than it was saying, "i love the creator of the universe."

once i started saying i love jesus in the context of i love my creator, jesus woke me up and showed me that he'd never left.

3 months ago, i became a christian.

3 months ago my heart and my words met for the first time.

"Hi Words, I'm Heart.  You've been trying to meet me for years and I've been waiting! Oh, hey there Heart,  ya... we're sorry about that.  We got stuck by Brain before we could come say hello. It's ok, Words.  I'm just glad to have finally met you.  Now we get to live life together!"

3 months ago, my love became sincere.

and because of the sincere love that has penetrated my heart, the bible is alive!

now enter back into what i was talking about before:
reading the New Testament like letters as they were intended to be read...

can you even remember what it's like to get a letter in the mail?

we're so used to contacting each other through texts, email and facebook.

but actually receiving a letter that someone took the time, which is so valuable to us, to find:

your address,

an envelope,

a stamp

and actually write or type out something intended for you to read is a great thing.

my friend brandon recently sent me a letter and i got so excited! ok, granted i get excited about very small things but still, just roll with me here.  he had told me i had a letter coming about a week before i got to read it and the anticipation building up to when i got home and was able to read it was great.  when i was a kid, my nana would send me letters all the time and i LOVED them, so getting this letter was just very exciting because since she died, i don't get mail anymore.  when i got home and finally read the letter it was so great.  it was good to hear about what is going on with his life that god is orchestrating and how he is doing.

then i got to thinking about the early church and how getting a letter from paul might have felt.

PAUL.

the early church members had no idea what they were doing.  they simply knew that jesus = love.
so getting a letter from Paul about their jesus.
oh dang.

think about the process: paul writing the letter in corinth to his brothers and sisters in rome. it takes time to write letters now but back then, it took even longer.  and it wasn't just paul thinking!  the words he was writing were god-inspired so he had to patiently and prayerfully wait upon the lord to reveal to him the words to be written.  so here paul was, writing to the romans months before it got to their eyes.  while paul was writing, my guess is that news about the coming letter spread amongst the christians who were waiting for it.  to wait for something as exciting as a letter about the savior of your soul is sure to build anticipation.  so now not only have they waited for paul to finish and proof read the letter but they had to wait for travel time to rome. look at this map!

it had to travel in secret from corinth (down near the city of Achaia) to the CAPITOL of the entire ancient roman empire (top left corner of the map).  THAT IS SO FAR.  it had to travel by boat and by land to the mecca of roman civilization.  AND THEN once it got to rome the carrier had to seek out the christians in secret by going around boldly drawing half of the christian fish in the sand hoping that the other person would respond by completing the image of the fish resulting in a conversation and directions to a meeting place.  then, THEN the news about the letter being in the same city as you are.  a letter written SPECIFICALLY for you about the ONE passion in your life: Jesus.  WHAT?!?!  could you imagine what that room was like?  people gathered in secret with their lives in utter danger to read this letter that they had been waiting to read for my guess is close to a year.  waiting for a year. hearing those words for the first time, oh the worship and joy of the spirit's weight on those people.  someone reading the words of god to the room of gatherers.  CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT?!  romans is 16 chapters long and in my little bible it is 17 pages long.  for us, it takes months to read through if we even read through it at all. for the christians in rome around 60 A.D. reading it only once over the span of a few months was not an option.  they read and read and read the words until they were written all over their hearts so much so that the words had to overflow into their lives.

so try reading romans like a letter instead of like a book.  try to read through it like you have been anticipating it for weeks and putting it down isn't even an option. try to soak it all in without analyzing it for once.  try to read it like you would read a letter from a dear friend instead of by an author you'll never meet.  try it. god will be there to read it with you.