Here we are a week into the new year and I’m bored already. I am trying to read some of the classics that I missed in my education, but I am at a dead stop with “A Tale of Two Cities.” It might as well be written in Latin for all I am getting out of it. The book is from an age and location with which I am unfamiliar. I might read a couple more chapters to see if I can grasp something of substance, otherwise I must completely give it up.

Now I am sounding like my relatives and friends when I ask if they are reading the Bible I gave them. The Scriptures are foreign to all of us in the beginning, and therefore it is only with a determined effort that any of us can get through the entire Bible and feel as if we are grasping the gist of it. I personally think it takes years of sitting under excellent teaching and re-reading to begin to feel we are anywhere close to knitting the pieces of scripture together and may finally see the warp and woof of the finished fabric someday.

After all there are 66 individual books in this one book called the Bible. The main author is the Holy Spirit, but because He worked through individuals in the recitation of the law, the brilliance of the beautiful poetry, the telling of history starting with the creation of the world, and throughout the gospels as they tenderly share the Good News of the Savior, the third book (Leviticus) seems, at first glance, to have nothing to do with the third book from the end (3 John). And yet, each book is wonderfully entwined in the whole once we see it as if we were enjoying a tapestry now from a distance after closely viewing the individual stitches.

We meet Jesus in Genesis and hear about Him throughout the Old Testament (39 books), while in the New Testament (27 books) Jesus is literally fleshed out as He comes to Earth as a baby.

The Bible is truly a classic, and everyone could benefit from reading it at least one time. The early Pilgrims in America actually used the Bible as a textbook to teach their young ones, and according to the American Heritage Education Foundation, “a study by Donald S. Lutz, as discussed in his 1988 The Origins of American Constitutionalism, shows that the Bible was the most frequently cited source in the political literature of 1760-1805 that influenced American political thought. This literature included both secular writings and ministers’ sermons.” That means it would do all of us good to be familiar with the Bible, and it would help us to understand our country’s foundations as well.

The Bible explains what morals are and why we need them, and it can teach us a lot of basic truths, but more importantly it is a story start to finish about God and His plans for us. It is a classic worth reading – even if we have to push ourselves to make the effort. To have read the Bible once is to have “skimmed the top,” in my opinion. The nuances do not appear until we seriously determine that we really want to know what God is telling us. To do that we have to pray and seek God’s guidance as we move slowly and surely, word by word, through the Book.

Personally I like to read the chronological Bible by F. LaGard Smith because Mr. Smith is a teacher, a lawyer and a minister. He looks at the scriptures through many lenses and then he writes a short explanation about the passages that are to follow. His insight gives me insight. This particular Bible is divided into 365 days of reading, so that if I stay on task I can finish reading it in one year. I’ve been reading this same now-tattered book for over 25 years, and I am still learning and enjoying and watching as the whole picture becomes clearer to me.

One of the things that helps me while reading is that I use the free online source BibleHub.com, which provides biblical commentaries. If I have a scripture that is just not making sense to me I check the commentary section and see what those learned men have to offer.

If you are sitting around bored like me in the January bleakness, now might be the perfect time to pick up your Bible and intentionally read through God’s story to see and experience God’s love as He speaks. Good-bye January blahs – hello Good News!

Note: Thanks to another online source, Dickens.Stanford.Edu, I am now reading “A Tale of Two Cities” with pleasure.