How to Read the Bible When You Don't Feel Like It

Howard Rutledge spent his boyhood sitting

through church in Tulsa, letting the verses and the old hymns

wash right past him. He had no idea he was memorizing the only

things that would one day keep him alive. In November of 1965,

Rutledge's plane exploded under enemy fire over North Vietnam.

He parachuted down into the hands of the people he'd been

sent to bomb, and they threw him into the prison the POWs called

the Hanoi Hilton. He would be there for almost seven years,

five of them alone. There was nothing in that cell, no Bible

to read, and no one to teach him. For the first time in his life,

the man who had always kept God at arm's length had left to

reach for except whatever was already inside his own head. So

he went digging around in there. He thought back to being a kid

in Sunday school, and he started trying to reassemble the hymns

he'd sung without ever once paying attention to the words.

He'd pull up one line, then another, and rebuild the song

from the pieces.

A bolt of lightning knocked the lights out across the prison,

and Rutledge lay there in the dark with the rain coming down,

and he reached for the next song on his list, number 37. We'll

come back to number 37. But

first, welcome to Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. I'm

Bart Leger. Let me tell you about my own struggle with this.

I've spent decades opening the Bible for a living, and there

are stretches where I read it as material. I'm three verses in,

and part of my mind is already outlining it and hunting for an

illustration. The book turns into work. I've had to learn to

read a portion of it with no sermon attached to it, where

nobody gets fed but me. Some mornings, that reading feels

like nothing at all, but I open it anyway. Maybe your version is

simpler.

Listen what the psalmist says in Psalm 119, 130. The teaching of

your word gives light, so even the simple can understand. An

older rendering of that same verse puts it this way. The

unfolding of your words gives light. Unfolding is a slow word.

It's what a flower does over the course of a morning, and what an

old letter does when somebody finally opens it after years in

a drawer. Nothing about unfolding is instant. So God's

word doesn't always reach you in the moment your eyes cross it.

You read a paragraph at six in the morning, and maybe you feel

nothing. Then, at two that afternoon, somebody says

something that cuts you, and a line from that paragraph comes

back and meets you right there where you are. Only then do you

realize you were reading for a reason. The light showed up

hours after the reading did. That's why the flat mornings

still count. Every time you open God's word, you're putting

something within reach for a day maybe you can't see yet.

Rutledge proved that under conditions none of us would

choose. He was handed those words in a Sunday school room

decades before anybody locked a door on him. Now back to that

dark cell in song number 37. What surfaced was an old hymn

called Showers of Blessing. Mercy drops round us are falling,

but for the showers we plead. He lay in a pitch black cell in the

middle of a storm, humming a song about rain that he learned

as a bored kid in Oklahoma, and it held him together. That

became his life for almost seven years. Every morning he made

himself get up and pray, working back through whatever scripture

he could rebuild from memory. He and the man in the next cell

would spend their few stolen seconds to tap code, helping

each other piece verses back together. Everybody could get

the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm. The one the men reached

for most was John 3.16. Rutledge wrote later that he never once

dreamed a single memorized verse could make a whole day bearable.

And the fragment he came back to most, the words he cloned to,

were a handful he'd learned as a boy and never thought about

again. Thy word have I hid in my heart. His one regret in that

cell was that he hadn't hidden more of it while he had the

chance.

before he understood he would need them. They just took a

couple of decades to open up. That's the promise for your

mornings when your readings feel flat. You're reading now for a

day that hasn't arrived yet. Here's today's challenge. Open

your Bible today, even if you feel nothing while you do it, or

just don't feel like it. Pick something short, a psalm or a

paragraph in the Gospels, and read it slowly twice. Thank God

for his word and ask him to use it in your life. Then close your

Bible, go on your day, and then let the feeling be whatever it

is. Watch for the moment later on, maybe at three in the

afternoon when a line comes back to you. wished he'd done, choose

one verse this week and put it to memory while you have the

chance. Father, thank you that your word does its work on your

timetable, whatever we feel like when we read. For everyone

listening who has been opening the Bible and coming away with

nothing, or at least they think they have nothing, keep them at

it and put your words in them now for the days they can't even

right now see coming. And when they need light, bring those

words back to them. Give us the patience to keep reading on the

mornings when nothing seems to happen. In Jesus' name, amen. If

this episode encouraged you today, would you share it with

someone who might need to hear it? Just go to

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only takes a second, and it might make a real difference in

someone's day. Thanks for joining me on Daily Devotions

for Busy Lives. Remember, God's word unfolds on his timetable,

so the reading you did this morning may be the light you

need this afternoon. Come back next time for more encouragement

to help you live grounded in God's truth. Until then, God

bless and have a great day.