Grasping a concept or idea intellectually is one thing: having it become a real part of who you are is something different.

I once heard it said, “Scripture contains the word of God in the way that the acorn contains the oak tree. It is all there, but its presence is made known to us little by little.” Living at God’s speed means accepting that my understanding of the way God works in my life will come to me in God’s time.  Sometimes the proverbial light bulb goes on in our heads and we learn something instantly, but most of the time real learning (spiritual growth) takes place slowly, over real time, as our life unfolds. This is especially important to understand in regard to the reading of sacred Scripture.

I had an experience I would like to share with you that might help to illustrate this point. I facilitate the operation of what is called the Relaxation Channel at the hospital where I work as a chaplain. The Relaxation Channel is a closed-circuit television system that is operated within the hospital. The channel is programmed with relaxing and spiritually oriented videotapes offering patients an alternative to commercial programming.

In setting up the system (prior to DVDs and digital technology appearing on the market), I had to make arrangements with a vendor to make copies of the original program tapes. The copies would then be run in a bank of VCRs that are used to run the channel so the original tapes would not get worn out from constant use. In all, I was was asking the company to copy about one hundred tapes, which I did not think would take very long at all. Having one hundred tapes made would provide enough copies to run the channel for about 5 years.

I imagined the vendor putting the original and the blank tape into a machine, then a button would be pushed and, zip, the tape would be copied in seconds. I figured the turn-around time to have the copies made would be a couple of days at the most. I was wrong. Making each individual copy would take two hours – the actual running time of the original tape. The vendor explained to me that every copy had to be made in real time.  The recording process was not zip as I had imagined.

This experience was a real eye-opener. It is a good illustration of the way God’s lessons (often found in Scripture) are revealed to us. God’s word becomes part of who we are – in real time – in real life, though we sometimes wish it were otherwise. It is through the interaction with life and the people in our life that we learn the really important lessons. It isn’t just a matter of reading it in a book. Even if the book is the Bible, experience with life matters. Here is another story:

Indeed there is a story about an intellectual youth who felt he could learn everything from books. He read about the stars and became an astronomer, he read about history and became a historian, he read about swimming and drowned. Some things we can only learn by wading in slowly, from the direct experience of the ocean lapping against our body. To enter this process directly is to participate in the healing we took birth for, is to become fully alive. – Stephen Levine, Healing Into Life And Death

The meaning of this story is not that you can’t sit in solitude with your Bible or some other spiritual book and gain valuable insight. Of course you can. What it means is that some of the things that you read about will only be integrated into your life through your active participation. That is how God chooses to work. Scripture, if it is affecting us in a healthy way, if it is to be a source of lasting inner peace, will direct us to find God revealed within the created world, especially in our relationships with others. Usually this happens slowly, over the course of many years, in the everyday situations of life.

Connecting Point:  Grasping a concept or idea intellectually is one thing: having it become a real part of who you are is something different. The latter takes active participation in life and is realized in real time – God’s Time.

Prayer:  God of wisdom, grant that I may give sacred Scripture and other spiritual writing the respect that they deserve. Help me to read with humility, allowing the knowledge you bless me with to move from my head to my heart, that it may truly enter into my life. Amen.

This article is from “Living at God’s Speed, Healing in God’s Time.”