How’s the Bible reading going?

More to the point of your question: this is a tension I’ve felt myself. I certainly can’t put burdens on my people that I myself am not able (or willing) to bear. At the same time, Scottish peasants who spent way more hours per day toiling for sustenance than we do in our cubicles certainly were more devotional, biblically literate, and theologically adept than most lay folks and many, many ministers today. One historian called the Scottish peasant the most remarkable European of the 16th-17th Century; they were socio-economic nobodies and yet they sat on Sessions (Presbyterian courts of elders) next to nobility because they manifested a spiritual maturity and biblical drenchedness that rivaled or even bested their social betters.

I think the bottom line is that none of us communes with God like our forebears did. We’ve all got our work cut out for us.

Now to google a read-the-bible-in-three-months plan so I can fulfill my New Years’ Resolution!