Indulge me here. Like most old-timers I like to reminisce from time to time.
On a regular basis, our minister has a couple participate in the worship service by reading the scripture for the day. Most often it is a husband and wife that does this; sometimes it's a mother and son. Yesterday it was Barb and I.
After church Barb remarked that there is a new edition of the Jim Bishop book "The Day Christ Died" - some 50 years after its original publication in 1967. She mentioned it because that is the book that started it all.
Fifty years ago we were living in Abilene, starting a family, and attending Highland. This was the Mid McKnight era, and Mid regularly had me "warm up" the audience by reading scripture 5 minutes or so before services began. Then I would step aside and spend the rest of the service in a small recording booth adjacent to the stage area (absent from my wife and young child - a fact that Barb
still brings up from time to time).
One Sunday the verse was from Genesis - the section where the Serpent, in response to Eve's assertion that they must not eat from the tree, lest they die, responds, "You will not surely die" - and for some reason, I literally hissed that sentence. And a light came on. I realized that there was a dynamic in scripture that I had never heard growing up. And the fact that I got positive reinforcement from several only sealed the deal.
At some later point, Mid asked me to read a section of the Bishop book. It dealt with the execution itself, and it is raw and emotional text. And I read it raw and emotionally, to bring it off the page.
And that was the beginning of 50 years of reading scripture aloud, like it was meant to be heard.
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