The New Burgundy

When dh and I were on staff in our first little church 16 years ago, the pastor there bought me a Bible.  I don't know why.  It's not as if I didn't have one. He just showed up with it one day and said he thought I'd get good use out of it.  Maybe he didn't like my contact-paper-held-together-NIV, but he bought me a NKJV Experiencing God Bible.  (Yes, I've read Experiencing God and yes I've lead a few...er, 6 groups through the workbook.  Hold your comments, please) I used it for a long time, wrote in it, studied from it.  It's kind of like a little home with a ton of  memories attached to it. 

For the past couple of years I have enjoyed reading Peterson's The Message paraphrase of the Bible and have just read it for what it is, envisioning the people, places and circumstances.   I haven't studied with it (you really can't), haven't written in it, just read it and let the fresh words spin the Word in a new way.  Reading it is kind of like visiting a close cousin's house where the rules are bent a little but the experience leaves you refreshed and sometimes breathless.  Eventually, though, you have to go home again.

The problem is, I can't move back into the old one.  Those observations scribbled in the margins come from a different mind with a different hermeneutic.  The authors I quoted then aren't the authors I read now.  The whole Experiencing God phenomena has come and gone and I'm not sure I'd be such a Blackaby proponent anymore. 

It's time for a new home.  Which, it turns out, is actually an old home.  Nearly 9 years ago when I graduated from seminary the Lockman Foundation gave all the graduates a new leather-bound NASB. Can't say it's my preferred translation, or my preferred color but I'm sure neither of those things matter when it comes to spiritual formation. 

Just ripped of the plastic -- I'm anxious to see how these new walls speak to me.