I would like to tell you that I read my Bible more...

Flik: Well you smashed your assignment out of the park. What a fantastic dinner party. And what a considerate host to have background on all your guests and ideas enough to keep generous conversation flowing. 

Now it's your turn to set me a challenge and you have asked, what is my favourite book of the Bible? 

Ok. So to set the scene. Most of my bible reading has come to me through going to mass. I've got about 12 years worth of Sunday readings under my belt. Except that for the last 6 years many readings were obliterated by my own pleading and praying with and over noisey children. 

From Sunday mass readings alone Isaiah is my favourite. And I'm not sure why I haven't gone straight to my bible and devoured that book all the way through. I think it might be beacuse: I read John through when I was quite young. 13 or 14. My Mum was writing a masters on it at the time and she knew all the stuff. I remember her commenting that it was strange that new converts, totally unschooled in John, loved it so much. And I answered, 'well it's just about love, isn't it.' Which I felt it was. And then I learnt some of the stuff about John, how his gospel has been structured to with in an inch of its life, and suddenly it was less about love and more an academic exercise. That. Or something like it is why I haven't spent much time with Isaiah at home. I don't want to ruin it for myself. Although generally I don't hold that ignorance is bliss:

I have read the New Testament a couple of times through - all except revelation; because I found The Last Battle in the Narnia series too frightening as a child, so I thought I'd better skip it... 

In the New Testament James is my favourite. Because he is kind and gentle. His voice and the things he says are very similar to Jesus' as we hear Him through the gospels, and I love the way in which reading James not only offers guidance on how we ought to live as disciples, but his voice, so alike to Jesus', underscores the truth that Jesus came to earth as a real man, in a real family with a sinless and pure mother who brought up Jesus and his brother to speak wisely and with love. 

I read Job recently when I was in a place of finding life hard, and the experience of that was going on for weeks. And I enjoyed reading it while wallowing in my misery, and complaining about it to God, and then I did feel uplifted when I got to the end and God finally answered Job and put everything right: 

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. ... On what were its bases sunk or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? 

Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst forth from the womb; when I made clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band; and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said 'This far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed?' 

I would like to learn parts of this passage, of which this is just a small excerpt, by heart. And the psalms. I'm gearing up to learning, and learning about, the psalms. I have three books about them on my shelf and am planning a deep dive, maybe this winter. Jesus was able to comfort himself, even on the cross, with a psalm that starts My God, my God why have you forsaken me? and journeys from there into the hope of the resurrection. I would like to have poetry that powerful on my heart and in my brain to access when rational thought is no longer possible. (Which is surprisingly often in my life).

I'm looking forward to hearing your Bible highlights. How have you been getting on with Fr Mike Schmidt's Bible in a year?