[Open Mouth, Insert Foot]

I had one of those moments today. I wrote a blog post not long ago (see post entitled "Dichotomy?" dated 2/22/12), and in it I talked about how pointless the devotionals before my math classes are.

Well today, as my prof started reading from her little devotional book (which I have not liked, for the most part), the words caught my attention and I listened a little more closely. It seemed to apply exactly to me and where I am at this moment in my life. After class I asked her if I could copy down what she'd read, and she let me do so:

"You are on the right path. Listen more to Me, and less to your doubts. I am leading you along the way I designed for you. Therefore, it is a lonely way, humanly speaking. But I go before you as well as alongside you, so you are never alone. Do not expect anyone to understand fully My ways with you, any more than you can comprehend My dealings with others. I am revealing to you the path of life day by day, and moment by moment. As I said to My disciple Peter, so I repeat to you: Follow Me."

The devotional book is called Jesus Calling by Sarah Young. Each devotional is a little paragraph or so written as if God is speaking to you personally. What makes me raise an eyebrow is that it takes one or two verses (potentially disregarding whatever context they were in), and not only rephrases them but "pads" them, if you will. Fluffs them up. I don't know that I can explain it much better than that, but from the example above, you might be able to tell what I mean.

The verses given for the devotional above are Psalm 119:105 and John 21:22. Psalm 119:105 says simply, "Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path," and the only piece from John 21:22 used in the paragraph are the words "follow me."

I don't want to completely close myself off to the devotional, because it might have some good things to say. But I am still learning how to approach interpretations of Biblical text and how much I should trust things that others write about the Bible in this fashion. I am not a theology major, and may never have the kind of training required to do translating and interpreting of Biblical texts myself and so am rather dependent on other people's translations and interpretations. But I am wary of taking them without question and applying them to my life (especially when they seem to me to lean toward the "fluffy" side). But I don't want that to mean that I'm always rejecting teaching when it could be that I need to hear and listen and learn something.

Anyway. All that to say that I made a big fuss about how pointless the devotionals were and, wouldn't you know, it actually led to some deeper thinking today, which has to mean that it wasn't entirely useless.