Part of Phil’s church did lectio divina on the OT passage where Elijah hears the still small voice of God in the wind (1 Kings 19). Earlier this year, my wife was in a choir, which I participated in for about a month, that did Mendelssohn’s Elijah, a moving, full-length oratorio (similar to Handel’s Messiah). This passage has special meaning for me because of the rehearsals, with hundreds of highly talented musicians harmonizing beautifully under expert direction.

At any rate, Phil’s reflection got me thinking about how we choose the scriptures we spend time in. Obviously, they have not done lectio on the whole OT up to this point, nor will they do the remainder. It’s a method used for specific, rich passages, not for comprehensive bible reading.

I started writing about this over at UrbanMonastery about a month ago. How do we read the Bible? It depends on what parts you’re reading. But my concern today is how we choose the passages to read. Is it a matter of rehashing the same “best” passages we were raised on, like Philippians 2 and Romans 8?

If we do limit ourselves to these old favorites, we will probably get a lot out of them, but we may also lose something valuable - fresh insights gleaned from passages no one has ever heard of. For all that The Prayer of Jabez (I would consider it unethical to post a link :-)) beat 1 Chronicles 4 to death, the publishing and devotional phenomenon illustrates how valuable obscure passages like this can be to our spiritual life.

In college, I had the privilege of sitting in class and attending church with some phenomenal professors like Dan Stockstill and John Fortner, who could make stories I’d never heard of come to life and open the way to spiritual depths I’d never experienced. But do we leave this gold-mining to experts like college professors? There aren’t enough of them, unless you live in a Christian college town.

Is it a matter of balance between comprehensive bible reading and devotional focus on special passages? If not, what? And should we expect and teach all Christians to read the bible comprehensively, or selectively?