intangible

Lindsay here.

The rain always serves to lift my mood & make me exceedingly happy – for some reason it is always just a reminder that God is present and in control, which I can't help but feel joyful about. But today, the darkness & dreariness has only served to add to my grief. I lost my Bible. Some of you are probably thinking - no big deal, just replace it. And yes, how blessed we are in America to so easily be able to gain a copy of God’s Word. Others of you probably know that a Bible is irreplaceable - especially if you are like me & are not afraid to write all over it. And mine is a journal Bible, which means lots of extra space, yay =) To get a new Bible almost feels like I will be starting from scratch. I underline like crazy the verses that are important to me. I take notes whenever I learn something new about a verse that I want to remember or that means something special to me. I keep prayer cards stuck in it, bookmarks, notes from my husband, lists of important verses, church notes, a picture of me & my husband, my list of words in Tagalog that the kids in the Philippines wrote out for me. It is so much a part of me and I just feel this huge sense of loss. My Bible is probably my most prized material possession and it is gone.

Along with this huge sense of loss comes a realization about my faith – not that I'm too attached to a material possession, but that I am too attached to the notes I've taken of what I've learned. I think I’ve been avoiding confrontation of this struggle, but today it was just brought so abruptly & undeniably into the light – I've been holding very tightly to an almost “cheat sheet” of my faith, fearing that if I don't have everything written down somewhere that I can reference, I won't know anything. Fearing that at any moment someone might ask me a question that I don't know the answer to. It's like a big part of my faith is not in me, but shakily written down on paper & in a book that can be so easily lost. That was so easily lost. I left it in the bathroom at work last night, along with the book "Sacred Marriage" by Gary Thomas, as I was ironically rushing to get to Bible study. They think the janitors probably threw my books away. [Aside: I'm sorry, but who would throw that away! I mean my name is imprinted on the front of my Bible & written on the inside - clearly it belongs to someone. Sigh]

I still need the tangible aspects of my faith – Scripture, communion, the church, my notes – but I also desperately need my faith to be more intangible, uncontainable, impenetrable, unshakable, unable to be stolen. I don't want to have a faith that I feel like I am barely holding onto by the things I have written down & haven't yet fully learned yet; that I only feel secure in if I can double check my notes first. I want it to be written on my heart. I need to take the time to commit things to memory instead of just jotting them down because I know I can always go back later and really learn them. Instead of just resting in the knowledge that I can ask my husband, the seminary student =)

Don't get me wrong, I still desperately want my Bible back (& I'm still praying it turns up!!), I still value the notes I have & the physical record of my learning process, but it just really hit me today how tightly I've been clinging to that. I desire to have a faith like the wise man, solid, unable to be moved & founded on Christ who is the only constant. I need to be ready when the storms come. I want to hear God speaking to me through Scripture when I don’t have a Bible with me. I want to feel confident in the faith that I profess & be ready to give an answer at any time of the hope that I have.

Does that make sense? I’ve been struggling all day to put into words how I feel about this. I think I understand. I think I’ll enjoy the storm tonight.