Bridge of Reason

8 in 10 individuals who were hospitalized by COVID-19 said they wished they had used the Bible more.’ I posted this originally in the Spring of 2021. Maybe it's a good time to remind ourselves of these things at the beginning of 2023. As we begin a New Year Reachout Trust is committed to encouraging Bible reading, which is in a poor state across the church. We have more and better access to a dizzying choice of Bibles, electronic Bibles having become very popular over recent years. It is reported YouVersion’s Bible App gives us free access to 1,839 Bible versions in 1,275 languages. And yet... Christianity Today reported Bible reading in the US has fallen away during the pandemic: ‘ Between early 2019 and 2020, the percentage of US adults who say they use the Bible daily dropped from 14 percent to 9 percent, according to the State of the Bible 2020 report released by the Barna Group and the American Bible Society (ABS).’ This is dissonance on a grand scale. A feast of the b...

Image by  Pedro Ivo Pereira Vieira Pedin  from  Pixabay   When you are struggling with a problem, when your plans don’t seem to be working out, when you wonder, ‘why is this so intractable, have I missed something?’ there is great wisdom in going back to first principles. This is especially true of Bible understanding. Writing at some length about the priestly role of Jesus, the writer to the Hebrews goes on: ‘ About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.’ Hebrews 5:11-14 W e notice several things in this passage: T...

 8 in 10 individuals who were hospitalized by COVID-19 said they wished they had used the Bible more.’ As we begin a New Year Reachout Trust is committed to encouraging Bible reading, which is in a poor state across the church. We have more and better access to a dizzying choice of Bibles, electronic Bibles having become very popular over recent years. It is reported YouVersion’s Bible App gives us free access to 1,839 Bible versions in 1,275 languages. Christianity Today reported Bible reading in the US has fallen away during the pandemic: ‘ Between early 2019 and 2020, the percentage of US adults who say they use the Bible daily dropped from 14 percent to 9 percent, according to the State of the Bible 2020 report released by the Barna Group and the American Bible Society (ABS).’ The troubling headline above comes from that report, saying , ‘Individuals were most likely to report an increase in Bible engagement if a family member in their household or a neighbor died from C...