read slowly

I guess I'm not a fan of speed reading, unless you're reading something not all that riveting to you, but having some importance, or else having to complete a heavy academic load. I think here especially of our Bible reading. When we read Scripture do we really let it have a chance, as God's word, to really get hold of us? To do so means more than to just read it, good as that is. I think it involves reading it slowly.

We read it slowly in a receptive manner, to receive it as what it is, the word of God. We may not know exactly what God is saying to us, or how this word is impacting us. But the important thing is that we're there with our Bible, in quietness before God, to let him speak or impact us as he pleases. It's not an issue of whether or not we have to sense that speaking or impact on us. No. We have to proceed by faith and seek to do so with a listening heart as in the words of Samuel, "Speak Lord, for your servant is listening."

Reading slow means to read letting the thoughts come to us. Letting the Bible speak to us on its own terms; thus truly opening ourselves up to the word of God and all that can mean for us.

This will take time on our part. Being unhurried. Reading Scripture can become monotonous and I think sometimes we have to fight through times of boredom and tedium in our reading of it. But often this is the case, surely, because we're not giving it the time and place it needs.
For my part, I tend to want to read it in large chunks and quite alot over time. But I'm afraid in doing so I may be running ahead of really letting the word of God speak to me.

I don't want to discount that fact that Scripture plainly speaks to us with mostly words that on the surface are not hard to understand. But it takes more than just an understanding of their meaning, but a work of God by faith, so that we will take in the meaning and reality of the meaning in Jesus, into the very fabric of our hearts and out from that into our lives. We are indeed, to eat the Book (cf., prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and John on the island of Patmos in writing the book of the Revelation).

I am a believer in us reading through the entire Bible from cover to cover, repeatedly. But I also think we need to be willing to read it slowly, and sometimes the same passage repeatedly. And we need to do this regularly, at least as a rule, once a day.

Of course some of us can have it quiet much easier than others. For some with babies and small children, quiet for any certain length of time may be impossible. We just have to do the best we can to get a space somehow, where we can do this, however imperfectly. The Lord looks on our efforts, not on the actual performance.

What help can any of you offer on this? Or anything you might like to say.