Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Chicken Soup.......A decade later


So...it's embarrassing to admit, but I totally had this conversation when I was a senior in high school with my youth minister's wife. "Yeah, I don't really enjoy reading the Bible. It's too confusing and boring. What I really get into is this book called Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. It's filled with all these heartwarming stories. I just love that." Now I'm not trying to knock the good ole CS book, and the fact that it has evolved into a whole series targeting "the grandmother's soul, the horse-lover's soul, and even the nascar lover's soul" (not kidding), but there was indeed some immaturity on my part thinking that there was even a comparison to God's Word.

I was talking about this story with a friend yesterday and the extremely cheesy title made me start thinking about the concept behind it: Comfort food for the soul. Putting my cool factor aside, it made me ponder, what are the passages in scripture that I would more or less refer to as my comfort food? The ones that I may have read a thousand times but yet they often bring out something new........ the ones that I never tire of reading........the ones that I distinctly hear God speaking to me? One of mine is Romans 8. The chapter is filled with so much that's it's kind of humorous to summarize in a sentence, but if I had to pick one thing that gets my attention most- it's the powerful imagery of God's love and commitment. I need that and I never tire of hearing it.

Sometimes there's this crazy notion that we have to discover something new in order to be interesting or to be considered deep or even to be worth sharing. Fresh insights are wonderful, but aren't we often drawn to the things that are tattered and worn and become richer over time?

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