EAT THIS BOOK

As part of the Bible fresh initiative celebrating the printing of the KJV 400 years ago, some of us are going to be part of a communal reading of the Bible through the year in 2011. If you are part of Network, you should have received a copy of ‘Eat This Book’: a reading schedule based on the Eugene Petersen’s Daily Message Bible. It takes about 10 minutes each day, and has 6 readings and one day to digest/recover in each week. This typically covers 3 chapters plus a psalm. You can buy this version of the Bible, or simply follow the plan if you possibly can, using a version of the Bible that suits you, and use things like 4mations and Networks to talk about what you are reading. We will use the talks at some Sunday gatherings through the year to help us understand what we are reading together. Please don't feel guilty or bad if you can't do it or miss a day: just jump right in where you can.

Let's be praying that we are helped by the Spirit to understand the Bible and meet with God as we read; what is the ‘big picture’, the ‘panoramic view’ of what God is saying to us, and how can we live by this truth today? We are not looking to understand the detail of everything we read (although that would be a bonus), but to develop a deeper relationship with God through His story.
More copies of the reading plan are available on the info table at Sunday gatherings.

The very beginning and the very end of a book often give us important clues about the whole thing.
The book of Job starts by telling us that Job is a good man, that he's devoted to God. This sets up a series of questions which are as poignant today as they were back then:

Is Job good because he has been blessed with material wealth and family around him? Does he worship and love God simply because nothing bad has ever happened to him?
Does our faith and devotion depend on whether life is going how we think it should?

At the end of the book, Job says 'I admit i once lived by rumours of you (God); now i have it all first hand...I'll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumour'
This gives us a key as to how to read the rest of the book: As Job is plunged into terrible suffering, he (and his friends) make all kinds of assumptions and judgments to try to make sense of what has happened. In the end, the only thing that brings relief is hearing from God himself and submitting to the limits of human understanding.

All of us have experienced suffering (or will do), either in our own lives or in the lives of others. Here Job wrestles with the most fundamental questions raised by suffering: Is God good? Does God care? Why is this happening?
As we try to help each other in these wretched times, we want to bring comfort and compassion, we want to feed faith and not unbelief, and we want to point each other to God, rather than try to work out (or worse, pontificate about) what is going on ourselves.

Jo Soper