I listened to one of Leonard Sweet’s “Napkin Scribbles” on my iPod this afternoon as I took the U-bahn to Starbucks. His podcast was called, “Cell Phones & Bibles” (from 10.14.07). As I listened, I recalled an awakening I had one afternoon in “Lutheran Mind” in Spring, 2006. (Not that I had been sleeping in class.) We had a guest lecturer, Dr. Timothy Saleska, that day. Dr. Saleska introduced his topic and then asked us to pull out our Bibles. I suddenly realized, and I wasn’t alone, that I didn’t have my Bible. Even worse, I realized that more often than not, I didn’t carry a Bible. I vowed a change.
Sweet recounts a pastoral conference he spoke at recently. He observed at the beginning of his presentation the majority of pastors fumbling around with cell phones, turning them off and putting them away – himself included. But then, a moment later, when he asked them to pull out their Bibles, there was silence. Now, he asks: what if we treated our Bibles the same way we treat our cell phones? Here’s a list he found online:
What if we carried it around in our purses or pockets?
What if we flipped through it several times a day?
What if we turned-back to go get it if we forgot it?
What if we used it to receive messages from the text?
What if we treated it like we couldn’t live without it?
What if we gave it to kids as gifts?
What if we used it when we traveled?
What if we used it in case of emergency?
“Hmmm,” he says, “wouldn’t it make you wonder?” He concluded that, “We need to be as in touch and as . . . almost a new body part . . . as our cell phones are, our Bibles need to be.”
You can find Sweet’s “Napkin Scribbles” at www.leonardsweet.com.
Peace to you, Jake
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