In good books.

The writer says to his readers, "Do you know why you listen to me? Why you read my books and say, 'Astounding'? It is because I am like you. You can identify with me. You can read these written words and say, 'Oh! I have felt that. It makes sense! People - silly, smart, foolish, self-absorbed people do that. That very thing! ...these things you write about. I see it."

"And do you know reader why we read good books? One very obvious reason is to learn. But have you ever asked yourself, 'What exactly am I learning?' Can you summarize it in the three points? Some very gifted people can. But I think very often we are absorbing so many thoughts and implications that it may be a challenge to say succinctly what."

This is how I feel when I read the Bible and this is how I think many people do or do not understand God's person. The Bible contains some of the richest description of relationship I have ever read. Because the Bible's Author is the consummation of story through time in history and epithets - God's names. We are in relationship and he wants us to know him. Why is he good? How does he work? What kind of people are we? Can we know him? How? How is it possible to understand?

The longer I am a Christian, the more I am conscious of my sin and what I know is truth. It's a weighty place, an unsettling place, a pivoting plain...as wide as your eyes can see. I am a wide-eyed child...still learning how to talk...coherently.

"When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understand his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right."
-C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

This is what I read in my Bible this morning.

Isaiah 54:4-8
You will forget the shame of your youth and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. For your Maker is your Husband - the Lord Almighty is his name - the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. The Lord will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit - a wife who married young, only to be rejected," says your God. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you," says the Lord your Redeemer.

55:6-9
Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.