Hopscotch

Last year I found myself a little weary of the Old Testament. Maybe, I thought to myself, I wouldn't read the whole Bible through in 2022. Maybe I would focus a little more narrowly. Maybe I would cultivate a lectio divina practice. But then I decided to stick with what I'd been doing. This is the seventh year in which I have tackled the project, and seven years seemed like a more suitable place to stop than six. (Were there six fat cows in Pharaoh's dream? No, there were not.)

In one of Lauren Winner's books (probably Mudhouse Sabbath) she quotes a rabbi talking about the Torah. In my recollection he compares it to a gem. "Turn it and turn it and turn it," he says (approximately); there's always new beauty to see in its depths when you look at it from another angle. This time through I kept telling myself that in Leviticus, and in Numbers, and in Deuteronomy: turn it and turn it and turn it. There are bits and pieces of those books that I do love (Balak! that story makes me laugh and laugh!), but I find that the sloggity-slog level is high at that point and it only increases from there. I was finishing Deuteronomy and thinking about what lay ahead with a sinking heart. I did not want to read about slaughter in Joshua. And I would rather read Leviticus four times than read all those awful happenings at the end of Judges.

I skipped ahead to Ruth, and then jumped into 1 Samuel. I'm going to have to go back to Joshua and Judges another time.

The plan that I use comes from the Coming Home Network, and it divides the readings into three daily chunks: New Testament, wisdom books, everything else. Those first two are pleasant and easy. The hard part is all that law and history and prophecy.

I am reading this post over, thinking it sounds a little masochistic for me to keep pushing myself through the hard parts over and over. Part of it is my Protestant roots: I aspire to be like those wise church ladies who have built their knowledge of the Bible over many years of committed daily reading. Part of it is that you can't know where you're going without knowing where you've been. The stuff that pains me in Joshua is the very same stuff that atheists hurl at Christians in arguments about the faith: why would you serve a god who thinks that kind of carnage is a good idea?

So I will keep reading and thinking and praying, chewing on the hard parts as well as the easy parts. But maybe I will not assign myself the very hardest parts here in the gray and discouraging tail end of winter which is also midterm season. Maybe I won't do that.