How amazing is it that we have direct access to the Bible?

God's own word and my own lap.

I mean, you could own a dozen different translations if you want.

You can read them whenever you want.

I grew up in a spiritual tradition that marveled at this, and we encouraged each other to read

the Bible every day on our own.

And called it our quiet time, just you and God's word.

This can be a beautiful discipline, but for most of the Bible's existence, it wasn't

experienced this way.

For 1500 years, most followers of Jesus heard the Bible, read aloud in group settings.

What that means is that the puzzles and scripture in there are loaded on to every page.

We're always part of a communal invitation to go connect to other people in the community

so that we can discuss it.

For the last few months, we've been going through a series called the Paradise series.

What kind of literature is the Bible?

Today we look at the final pillar of the paradigm that the Bible is communal literature written

and designed for a community to experience together.

The idea of the quiet time and you and God and your Bible one-on-one is a cultural product

of our setting.

It doesn't mean it's bad, but it means there are other ways that people have engaged

the Bible and maybe there are strengths to those other ways that our culture setting is

actually missing out on.

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