The End In The Middle

This morning as I was reading my daily bible reading I finished the Bible. My plan called for Revelation 21-22. That's it. The end. Here I am in the middle of the year and I just read the end of the Bible. This reading plan is over a hundred years old, and it is my first year using it. I really love it, especially since it is on my iphone. Each day I just open the app and read the passages. My Bible reading is far from over.

I've been reading the Bible this year in The Message, a modern language version. I've enjoyed it very much. As John, the revelator, is in the presence of the angel that is showing him the new heaven and new earth the angel says, "Don't put it back on the shelf"; the scroll of all that is happening. In the NIV it says, "do not seal up the words of this prophecy of this book, because the time is near."

I've been moving over here into the new office, and that has required me to bring a bookshelf from home, but only some of the books that were on it. Now there are stacks of books on my patio that need to be stored, but I haven't done it yet. The difficulty comes in picking which books to bring and which to leave. I picked books that I intend to take off the shelf, but there are a couple books that I keep off the shelf. One is my Bible. I keep that on my desk or somewhere around my desk. The other is my journal. I have journals on the shelf, but the one that contains the present record of my life stays off my shelf. The third one is always the book that I'm reading. Right now I'm reading A.W.Tozer's The Pursuit Of God. These books stay off the shelf because they have such regular and imediate application to my life. The angel after showing John all around heaven and the eternal picture of the end of time says, "don't put this one back on the shelf." God's word is meant to be with us, in us, and even working on us. Don't keep in on the shelf.

--Ben