The Good Book...Day

 I'm waiting for the United Nations to declare the World Day to Honour All Other Days. There are more days the international agency has declared than we could possibly earnestly observe. Just the same, I do find the descriptions of these annual days informative and the artwork is usually evocative. This is UNESCO World Book Day, in case you were wondering. It prompted me to ponder how collectively Jews, Muslims, and Christians are described as "people of the book," meaning that we share key stories from the Hebrew scriptures. In fact the name Bible actually means book, and the bible is sometimes described as the Good Book. 

Yesterday we began a book study using Amy-Jill Levine's The Sermon on the Mount as our guide through these three remarkable chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. We are in a Green zone so we could include in-person participation (suitably masked and hosed down) and Zoomers. There were 10 virtual attendees and 6 at the church, which blew me away. Sixteen people who made time in their lives to come together and find meaning in a 2,000-year-old book within a book. It's a credit to Levine that her book allows the Sermon on the Mount to come alive in our imaginations.

I've written before about the statistics showing the precipitous decline in bible reading by Christians of every stripe. I grew up in a prehistoric times when kids were challenged to do bible drill -- bizarrely called sword drill in some denominations -- where books and chapters and verses were called out and the chase was on to find them. We were given stickers as rewards for naming books of the bile from memory. during Vacation Bible School. While rote learning has gone our of fashion in every sphere of education I don't regret that challenge. 

It's an irony that we have so many excellent versions and paraphrases of the bible now, and a wealth of support material, but we are less likely to read them. Have you opened up your Good Book lately? Perhaps you could spend a few minutes leafing through your bible on this World Book Day. 

Oh yes, I was really impressed by the comments and insights from people in the study yesterday.