Reading the Bible

When I first got myself a Bible, a New King James version, and tried my hand at reading it, I was rather intimidated by the book for I knew not from where I should start and to where I must end. “Try the Gospels, starting with Matthew.” A friend of mine suggested. 

I did that. Guess what! That seemingly innocent gesture did change my outlook of life from that point onwards. Gradually, I see myself changing. 

But don’t expect me to tell you of miraculous occurrences that catalysed my conversion or those ensued after I’ve accepted Christ into my life. You’re in for an anticlimax when I tell you that none of those happened. Yes, not even one, no tongue-speaking, no mysterious voices from the empty air, no dazzling bright light, no answers to my predicaments, none of my problems got resolved, in fact they got far more worse than before I placed my trust in God. 

The transformation in me was far more subtle, a non-event, but it definitely laid the seed for my ultimate conversion several months later. 

So what happened at the first reading? At first, I was bogged down by the seemingly unintelligible passages that goes on and on about this who begot that who, and that who this who and so on. It was until when I read the Sermon of the Mount that I suddenly felt my heart strangely warmed. If you remember the little match girl in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales, the experience is somewhat similar to the hour when she lit a match in the midst of the deep cold and hunger, and how that tiny flame from that miserable strand of wood offered such wonderful light and comforting warmth. And like in the story, the match stick eventually burnt itself out, the flame yielded away and the warmth tapered off. But that memorable, albeit short, acquaintance with the Bible and with God prompted me to want to know more about the Bible and to know about God.