Routine Exercise vs. Real Desire
My Bible-reading has been progressing slowly through the Old Testament. It’s taken me about two years, but I’m at last up to Haggai, so it’s safe to say the end is in sight.
Lately I’ve been reading in Streams in the Desert too — to sort of prime the pump before I open my Bible in the morning. I was struck by today’s juxtaposition between a Streams meditation on the shallow soil of Jesus’s parable, and my own reading of the Bible. “From the context of the teaching of the parable,” reads Streams, “it seems that we must have something to do with the depth of the soil.”
My soil isn’t very deep when it comes to the prophets, I guess. How different my reading of these books is from my reading of the other books that fill my hours. If you ask me about a library book I read last week, you could expect me to give you a decent basic summary. I’d remember the plot. I’d remember the main characters. I’d remember the general mood and central preoccupations.
But ask me about my Bible reading ever since Isaiah, and all I can give you is a vague, dreamlike impression of ocean waves: wrath and judgment, alternating with lavish promises and reassurances.
Somewhere along the line in this reading, I’ve simply given up. The mentality of these books is so foreign to my whole experience. There are spots of recognition for me, but no true comprehension. It bothers me that my heart is so cold toward God’s word. What do I expect? That God should not only manifest himself in nature, the written word, and the Incarnation, but should make himself easy and comfortable to my lazy modern mind?
A friend observed this week that the phrase “undivided heart” appears only a few times throughout scripture, and every time, it’s depicted as a gift from God, something God does.
I think too of Thomas Merton’s words, as quoted in Sacred Pathways:
Contemplation will not be given to those who willfully remain at a distance from God, who confine their interior life to a few routine exercises of piety and a few external acts of worship and service performed as a matter of duty… God does not manifest Himself to these souls because they do not seek Him with any real desire.
Lord, forgive me. Give me an undivided, receptive, understanding heart.
