Well today turned out not as expected... all afternoon and part of the early evening spent at the local hospital having more blood tests, another ECG and a chest X-ray all because my temperature hit the 'danger' level of 38C.  A lot of time spent sat on a trolley feeling generally ropey before they sent me home with high dose antibiotics.  It's 36 years since I last had any antibiotics so that'll be interesting!

Anyway, they are happy that all should be well and there is no nasty infection lurking somewhere.

I have decided this constitutes a muddy puddle - more annoying than anything else, necessitating some action to overcome it but all being well soon forgotten.

So, gentle readers, please don't panic and please don't try to call me as I'll be in bed resting for a day or two.  Which may make this bit of blogland a little quieter.

Yesterday's Bible reading was the beginning of Hebrews 7.  I must have been meant to focus on this because it was the PAYG meditation too.

A reminder of the importance of living in the present, not the past, not the future... "Today, if you hear God's voice...."  and "while it is called Today..."

Today I have a cold - bah!  This meant I had to go to my GP and have blood tests to ensure I can fight it off and that it isn't something nasty.  (Everything seemed to be fine, cold notwithstanding)

Today I have to stay home, keep warm and monitor my temperature just in case...

Today has enough joys and sorrows of its own... and puts both yesterday and tomorrow into proper perspective.

Yesterday's Bible reading was from the start of Hebrews 2:

"We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard..."

Every now and then I find myself drifting into skim reading my devotional Bible readings, especially if they are gospel passages I know well.  Periodically I try reading NT stuff in Greek - this has two obvious benefits, firstly it stops me losing what little Greek I have and secondly it forces me to read much more slowly.  Sometimes I try reading aloud (an advantage of living alone!) which again makes me read every word properly.  Occasionally I play with Lectio Divina type approaches. 

It was useful to be reminded, albeit in a slightly sideways fashion, of my tendency not to pay proper attention to what I have 'heard' thinking I already know what it says and missing the new insights that await.  I think this is one of the reasons I like group Bible study - the practice of reading aloud and reflecting together allows us to see new emphases or spot things we haven't spotted before.  It's also one of the bonuses of slogging through the Greek or using less familiar translations.

I know that in a few weeks I will need to pull myself up again, having drifted back to skim reading.  I suspect I am not alone and I wonder what strategies others use to try to overcome this tendency in their own devotional reading?

An interesting report from the EA to read online here.  I was especially interested in the statistical stuff which shows some interesting results (with the usual pinch of salt needed for any statisitical stuff) and the fact that under 25s are less likely to call themselves 'evangelical' than older people (and indeed that it is the oldest age group of respondents who were most likely to.... discuss!).  With significant numbers of evangelicals open to the potential for abortion, assisted suicide and homsosexual lifestyles, the old foot-stampy "it's wrong, end-of" positions are clearly not sustainable and a time has to come when those churches/people willing to engage with these issues and even, shock horror, change their views won't automatically be branded 'wishy washy liberals', 'backsliders' or 'heretics.'

Always useful for us to ask ourselves what is essential and what is negotiable about our faith.

I like it when things make me think, and yesterday's reflection on 2 Timothy 3:10 - 17 in Words for Today certainly did that.  The writer was reflecting on what is meant by 'scripture' and what is meant by 'God-breathed' if you don't go down the 'inafallibility' route which is clearly not supported by the text.

"Scripture" the writer asserts means '"sacred writings" - all sacred writings.  Presumably, though he does not say it, those of any or all faiths.  The inspiration cannot guard against fallibility of transmission, so presumably that would be why there are differences, assuming his logic holds.  Having read portions, albeit very select portions, of Sikh and Islamic sacred texts as part of my theological education I cannot deny that there is evidence of the same inspiration (which is probably a factor in my inclusivist, fulfilment theology).  I recall at the cross-cultural wedding I conducted using a Hindu blessing (in English!) which all the Christians could happily say 'amen' to.  I would concur that in 'officially' sacred texts we can detect God's voice, often in surprising ways.

The writer then takes things a step further:

'All we have to do to turn any good book into God's word for today is to ask the question "What would Jesus make of this?"

Essentially, then, he says God can speak to us through any piece of writing that is 'good' - but then I have a question of what he means by 'good'.  Does this equate to the quality of writing?  Surely not, because that would rule out the Gospels which are in very poor Greek!  Does it equate to the standpoint of the writer - e.g. as 'my kind of Christian'?  I think not, since that would rule out the Prophets who often offended their hearers/readers!  I am not sure that I can come up with a neat definition of 'good' that would permit me to say 'God can be heard in this but not that.'  Easy enough to say 'God can't be heard in slander' or 'God won't be heard in vitriol'; not so easy to say 'God will/might be heard in...'

So what do I do?  I decided I'd check what the Greek says, albeit using an online interlinear as all my Greek books are at church.

Verse 15 speaks of 'sacred writings' whilst verse 17 (the one people use for their infallibility arguments) says simply 'every writing [is] God-spirited/breathed'.  The word 'good' does not appear.  Whilst it would seem reasonable, in context, to restrict the divine inspiration to 'sacred writings' that doesn't remove the question of which writings are designated as sacred.  There is, I think, an implied question of authority here, and one that any half-decent Practical Theologian ought to be willing to wrestle with!

Suppose we say, with the simplest reading of verse 17, that God inspires writing - be that 'scripture,' hymnody, prayer, history, fiction, scientific reports, newspapers... even tweets and blogs - then there is the potential for God to be heard in any or all writing.  That does not make all 'writings sacred', some are self evidently profane, and it does not give all 'writings' equal status.  As a Baptist I sign up to a Declaration of Principle that located primary authority in Jesus Christ the 'living word' over against any 'sacred writing.'  Which is fine except that the only way to meet him is via the Christian sacred texts... it is a no-brainer that the Bible among texts has priority.  But after that?  Does theology trump fiction?  Does science give way to poetry?  Does western liberalism outweigh Asian scripture?  There are no simple answers and maybe the question "what would Jesus make of this" is a good one - so long as it not simply a case of "what would the Jesus I have created in my own image make of this?"... which of course opens up a whole new can of theological worms (as distinct from a diet thereof).

In the end I think I am content with the idea that God inspires the enterprise of writing and that it is possible for us to detect hints and glimpses of God's voice in the most unexpected places - but I thought that before I read the notes yesterday.  I think what I have been made to consider is just how wide or narrow is my personal canon of potential resources, and that's no bad thing.