Doubleday Pocket Bible Guide

Book by Grenz Linda

The Book of Your Life

Countless people have found that the Bible has a unique and compelling power to describe and renew their lives.  It helps them understand themselves or make important decisions.  It offers hope, encouragement, and a sense of peace.  It tells them that no matter who they are or what they have done, God reaches out in love.

Even some of the "boring" parts of the Bible give people clues to what life is about.  The Bible tells a story that is familiar and yet new to each person who reads it.  It tells the story of your life and mine.  It tells the story of people who have followed and been met by God.  And it tells God's story.  You don't have to know anything about the Bible--you don't even have to be especially "religious"--to discover that you and God are closer to each other than you ever imagined.

The common image of life as a journey suggests movement, development, and a willingness to go forward.  Our spiritual life is a journey on which we search for someone or something to hold life together and make sense of what we experience.  In the Bible, Jews see that "someone or something," as Yahweh; Christians find it in God as revealed in Jesus Christ.

The Bible tells us how God's people have experienced and understood God throughout the centuries and how that experience and understanding changed them.  So studying God's Word is a spiritual journey we take with the hosts of people who have gone before us--and millions who travel it each day.  We can travel that journey for the rest of our lives and never run out of things to see and learn and explore.  Each time we open the Bible, we can discover something new.  It is a living book.  And one that can continue to speak to us and help us along.  In fact, reading the Bible is not as complicated as many think.  Understanding God may be more within your reach than you realize.  "Ask," said Jesus, "and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you" (Matthew 7:7).

I invite you to join me on this journey to discover who God is and who God calls you to be, to find your life story in the Bible's stories and to experience for yourself the power and presence of God's Word in your life.  I am a Christian, so my understanding of the Bible and my witness to its power in my life grows out of that perspective.  People of other faiths will find much of the Bible's story is their story as well.  Christians, Jews, and Muslims, in particular, share a common biblical heritage that can be explored together.  Those who are not members of any particular faith but are drawn to the power of sacred scriptures will also find the Bible to be a place where they can meet the Holy One.

What's In It?

The Bible is the story of God's action in the world, and it tells God's Word for all people.  Not just one book, it is rather a rich and fascinating library of books.  This library contains stories about the high and low moments of life, about heroes and villains, battles and travels, prophets and rulers.  It compiles songs and poems, and long lists of genealogies and regulations.  It chronicles stories of the life of Jesus and his earliest followers, along with letters written to friends or groups of Christians that met in homes.  And it is replete with more general guidelines for living.

Like the volumes in any library, the Bible's books were written by different people at different times and places.  Some books were written by several people.  Sometimes more than one person wrote about the same story in different books.  These stories were not written down as they happened; they were told over and over, often for generations, before someone finally put pen to paper (or papyrus!).  As best as scholars can tell, the various books of the Bible were penned during a thousand-year period that began as far back as three thousand years ago.  So the Bible comes to us through many people whose lives spanned many years.

The Bible has been many things to different readers since it was written.  So too, each of us reads and experiences the Bible differently depending on who we are and what is happening in our lives.

For many people the Bible has been:

A source of comfort in difficult times.  War veterans, prisoners, hostages, and those who are ill, in great pain, or facing death often tell of turning to the Bible to understand their suffering and to find strength to face what is ahead of them.  (See "Finding Help in the Bible," p.  177, for helpful passages.)

A treasury of familiar stories for children and adults: Joseph and his coat of many colors; Noah and the ark; Moses leading the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land; King David's adultery with Bathsheba; Queen Esther's bravery; Ruth's loyalty; the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; and the stories about Paul and the early church.  These stories are so popular because in them we see the goodness and the failures of both average people and royalty.  And in them we can see ourselves.

A guide for living well and wisely.  The "rules of life" that emerge from the stories, the Ten Commandments and the Torah, Christ's Great Commandment, the words of wisdom told by leaders of old, the passage on love in 1 Corinthians 13, all have helped people understand how to live holier lives.

A collection of profound insights about our identity.  The Bible tells us who we are as people of God.  To find ourselves, we do more than look inward, we also turn to the wisdom of the biblical ancients.

Take It Personally

To fully understand the Bible, what we read there must be personal and relevant to our lives.  What we find there must tell us about God and what it means to be a person of God.  And we study the Bible with others so we can tell stories from our own spiritual journeys, hear the stories of others, and find those stories echoed in the lives of people ancient and contemporary.  In this way we hear God's Word and together learn to live as God's holy people in today's world.

For both Christians and Jews, the Bible is the story of God's faithful relationship with people over centuries.

For Jews, the Bible relates how they became God's chosen people, were brought to the Promised Land, and led into a covenant relationship with God.  Jews study the Bible to learn and heed "the Law" (Torah, instruction).  This spells out the terms of the covenant relationship between God and the Israelites and continues to guide them on how they are called to live as the people of God.

For Christians, the Bible also contains the story of God's ultimate act of bringing people into full relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Christians study the story of God's action through Christ so that we can become part of that story--entering into full relationship with God through Christ.  We understand that our relationship with God is not ours alone; it is in and through Christ and other Christians.

You may be a Christian, a Jew, a member of another faith group, or you may not belong to any organized religion.  You can find help and meaning in the Bible in your own way and in your own faith group.  Just open the book and read.  And look around you; you will find a fellow traveler who will go on the journey with you.
Using This Book

This pocket guide gives you several simple ways to read and study the Bible.  It is divided into sections:

"Books of the Bible" gives a summary of the contents and an outline of every book in the Bible to help you select what you want to study.  It also lists famous passages in each book.  This section is divided into three parts:
Old Testament (also referred to as the Hebrew Scriptures, Jewish Bible, or Tanakh)
Apocrypha (also known as the Deuterocanonical Scriptures)
New Testament (also called the Christian Testament)

"Approaches to Scripture" provide a wide variety of step-by-step plans to help you lead a group in reading the Scriptures or to do your own reading, reflection, and study.  These include:
"Finding Your Way," which lays out what you will see when you open the book
"Individual Approaches to Scripture"
"Family Approaches to Scripture"
"Group Approaches to Scripture"
"Finding Help in the Bible," which leads you to verses or various topics, emotions, or situations
"The Complete Revised Common Lectionary," which gives you a course of readings you can use as the basis of a weekly reading or study session

"People in the Bible" and "Places in the Bible" tell you about the most common people and places in the Bible

"Glossary of Terms" defines key words and concepts you will find in the Bible that may be unfamiliar

The Time Line and maps give a chronology of the key events in the books of the Bible along with maps of biblical lands at various points in history

"Tools for Further Study" lists some basic references to keep your exploration going.

So pick a passage and/or an approach that best suits you.  (See "Your Personality and Scripture" on p. 173 for descriptions of personality types and their relationship to the various methods of approaching the Bible.)  Use the descriptions in "Books of the Bible," "The Complete Revised Com...