Over And Over Again

  I am a re-reader. I have several of my favorite books that I am constantly pulling off the shelf to read again. I find that every time I do I find something new, or something I forgot, or something I just love experiencing again. Great classics have that kind of power

    In his book Three Philosophies Of Life, Peter Kreeft makes the following statement:

A classic is like a cow: it gives fresh milk every morning. A classic is a book that rewards endlessly repeated rereading. A classic is like the morning, like nature herself: ever young, ever renewing. No, not even like nature, for she, like us, is doomed to die. Only God is ever young, and only the Book he inspired never grows old.  

  The Bible is the greatest classic ever written because it came from the breath of God (2^nd Timothy 3:16) Jesus himself is described as the Word (John 1:1-14). It is a book that is fresh and ever new. Those that continually study it will never have to worry about it becoming stale or outdated.

  Jesus said in Mathew 13:52, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old." Scribes were the writers and scholars of their day. They were tasked with copying the Scriptures, a vital task in the days before printing. Strict rules regulated their efforts. Each column of writing could have no less than forty-eight, and no more than sixty lines. The ink must be black, and of a special recipe. Each Scribe would verbalize each word aloud while they were writing.  Their work would be a reviewed every thirty days, and if as many as three pages required corrections, the entire manuscript had to be redone. The letters, words, and paragraphs had to be counted, and the document became invalid if even two letters touched each other.

   I imagine that recopying the same texts over and over could grow stale. But Jesus says those that would follow him would see new perceptive breathed into those same texts. The words have an even deeper meaning under the light of Jesus. The Bible is an amazing book for any person but for those that follow Jesus see it in an even more important way. His words are “Spirit and Life” (John 6:63)