One of my New Year’s Resolution this year is to read more books. Last year I didn’t meet my Goodreads Reading Challenge and I found that I was spending an awful lot of time watching TV or fighting tiredness. As my husband and I have made the decision to start the year with a month without meat, I also want to change other lifestyle habits to take better care of my body and mind. I will write more about that in another post, as I am already reaping the benefits and want to focus on that in a bit more detail elsewhere – but I feel that reading more will broaden my mind and draw me away from screens and their immediate and long-term health risks.
The non-completion of the Goodreads challenge marked the completion of yet another year, one which I ended with mixed emotions. That seems to be a growing trend over the years; this time triggered by a great sense of achievement having completed my Bible in a Year plan alongside some other books, but the feeling that I had also missed out on so much because of fear and stress and tiredness. As I reflect back on the past months, I am reminded that there is always growth, though we hardly notice it in the moment because it is not a fast thing, yet time does not linger or wait for our convenience.
My previous attempts at reading through the Bible in a year have been in vain, so I am not quite sure how I managed to stick to it this year. I remember there was a point where I was two months behind, but instead of seeing this as a failure, I endeavoured to read a bit more each day at the time to make up for lost ground. We tend to see tasks or activities in their daunting whole rather than in their more achievable parts, and this has often led me to quit altogether on certain goals. But this experience has shown me that with patience and determination, we can approach any kind of task or obstacle and overcome them in time.
One of the biggest things I have learnt from reading through the entire Bible is that I really need to be reading it through on a regular basis. By the time I had read through a month, I couldn’t remember everything I wanted to remember from my earlier readings. I can remember noticing certain aspects of the text, or posing questions about some of the passages, but I cannot recall what those thoughts and questions were. It speaks to the enormity of our God, that He is the Word – legible and discernible, but far beyond what we are able to hold in our minds at any given moment.
I am grateful that in the end I was able to complete at least this challenge; I now have a more complete picture of how God has lead His people throughout the ages, and why certain traditions have prevailed over others, and I am excited to deepen that understanding and get stuck into another year of the Word of God.
One other book that especially stood out to me from last year was The End of Night by Paul Bogard. Written in 2013, Bogard highlights the significance of maintaining darkness when nature dictates thus, reporting on the consequences artificial light has on our health, industries and wildlife as a result of increased use. It was an incredibly eye-opening book to the harm we are inflicting on ourselves, not to mention the beauty we are denying ourselves and future generations. I can remember years ago as a child when I went on holiday with my family to the Lake District. We had a boat there and had arrived late at night. As my father rowed us from the shore to the boat, I looked up in awe and watched as shooting star after shooting star exploded above me. I am not sure now if that was an exaggeration of my childish memory, but I have certainly noticed over the years how dull the night skies have become above me and how few the stars seemed to have become.
The Psalmist writes, “The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.” (Psalm 19:1-2). It seems that even as the world turns its back on God, our actions are also concealing that which points to His existence.
Yet beyond this, there is a parallel to our lives that I could not ignore. In our modern lives, where contentment and happiness is fed to us on demand in the form of TV, games, or the quickest and easiest way to complete the housework or the shopping, we have been shaped to avoid discomfort at all costs. We are told that it is OK to not want to do things that are outside of our comfort zone. In fact, it is seen as more beneficial to avoid the damage we may sustain if we do so, than to experience growth with the damage. But this is not what the Bible seems to tell me.
In particular, Jacob comes to mind, who wrestled with God all night long and suffered from a hip injury for the rest of his life (see Genesis 32:22-31). Jacob’s story is one filled with deceit and unexpected turns, yet ultimately one of growth as he learns to trust and follow the Lord. Many other accounts attest to the importance of salvation of our souls over that of our physical (and sometimes emotional/ mental) well-being.
How can we experience the beauty of the “joy [that] comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5) when we have not experienced the fullness of night? Indeed, how can we learn to properly see those multitudes of stars if we cover them over with our own poor attempts at lighting the way? Bogard demonstrates our misconceptions of the need for more street lighting at night, highlighting that instead of making us safer, it enables crime at shocking rates. Yet we increasingly insist on adding more lighting throughout our cities and homes. Likewise, is it perhaps time to remove the distracting spiritual lights from our lives so that we may see God’s pure light? Rather than saving us, there are many modern amenities that have made us increasingly vulnerable to the things that are not of God.
Last year was filled with many disappointments. There was a new kind of pain that I have not encountered before, and my instinct has been to shy away and block it out. But God has revealed this new understanding to me; that His light shines brightest when there is no other light, and my path is better lit for it. That path leads me to face my pain full on, and instead of denying it, embrace it and allow it to run its course on my journey with Him. He will do as He wills with it in time, and I can free up a piece of my heart for the many many good things from Him that have always been there, right in front of me. Perhaps in time, after the pain has gone and the wound healed, there will be a scar alongside the other scars that we all carry from life. But I would like to think that the reward was far greater than the price; that though life continually proves to be difficult and painful, God gifted me more grace, more patience, more of Him with each challenge He led me through – that each of those scars prompted me to get out of the house, turn off the lights and look up to the only Light we need.
Hearing, seeing, believing 