I hope we’re all connecting the dots between Bible reading and prayer. To grow beyond merely asking God for help with our dreams and desires, we let the Bible remold our dreams and desires – so we pray more genuinely “in Jesus’ name,” that is, in sync with Jesus’ dreams and desires, which are gradually becoming our own. And then our quiet mood of being with God in prayer, and opening our souls to God in prayer make us more attentive, careful readers of Scripture.

One of the P’s I suggested as accessible places to dig into the Bible is the Parables of Jesus. You have to love Jesus for being such a spellbinding storyteller, and for making up vignettes that reveal much about God’s mind and heart, and our lives at the same time – without being simplistic or obvious. Jesus told stories, and listeners scratched their heads and needed to wrestle with what he’d said. Not one of them has an obvious “point.” And you have to admit in each story there’s something not just puzzling but downright counter-cultural.

Matthew 20. A manager of a vineyard hires people throughout the day, then pays them all the same wage. No way to run a business – but what do we then make of the way God runs God’s business of human thriving? Matthew 13. A sower flings his seed all over the place, including the rocks, road, and thorns. Fool. Jesus isn’t giving instructions on how to run a farm. He’s illustrating something about God, who must then be generous, profligate (an old word I love), eager for God’s life to get out and around and everywhere – and you just never know where surprising life might spring up! Or do you detect anything else going on?

Luke 10:29-37. A fun exercise in Bible reading is to identify with the various characters in the story. Busy religious people scurry right past the wounded man, but the Samaritan – the guy Jesus’ listeners loathed, despised, and avoided at all costs – stops to help. Is Jesus saying Be like the Samaritan, not the busy religious guys? St. Augustine read this and suggested we’re the one beaten and desperate for help lying by the road. Good image: somebody help me! I taught this to some rowdy adolescent boys and asked them whom they identified with. They snickered and said “The guys who beat the other guy up.” They were being smart-alecks – but good point. Whom have we hurt, even unknowingly, and left somewhere to suffer alone?

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer completed his second doctoral degree in theology at age 24, he took a job as youth pastor at a suburban, relatively poor church in Berlin. The boys there were rowdy, delinquent, and utterly bored by Bonhoeffer’s highly intelligent expostulations upon theology. So he surrendered and decided he’d simply read aloud Bible stories to them. They calmed down, listened, and behaved. No explanations were offered, no moral points were made. Bible stories were and are good enough just the way they are. Read them. No life lessons, no takeaways. Let them have their way with you.

Bonhoeffer loved to remind people of how Adam and Eve lost their way, and as a result lost their idyllic garden. God gave one simple command. But the serpent teased out the ever-dangerous question: “Did God really mean for you not to eat the fruit?” Did God really mean…? Always ask yourself if you’re weighing this question as you read. Luke 14: when you have a party, don’t invite your pals, but the poor. But did God really mean for us to do this? Matthew 6: don’t lay up treasure on earth. But did God really mean…? Turn the other cheek? Love your enemy? Did God really mean…? When you catch yourself asking this, stick with your own question and see if there’s something fresh God is saying to you through what God surely can’t mean for you actually to do.

Back to the P’s. Did you try Psalm 127? Any thoughts? “Unless the Lord builds the house”? What building, what projects, what desires might be found in that box of an idea? And how would the Lord build such things? Respond and let me know!