I’ve been thinking more about the St. John’s Bible that I saw yesterday (see previous post) and the seven-year process of its production. Well to be more accurate, I’ve been thinking about this in contrast to the rush by many of us to pump out blog posts, articles, emails, journal entries--on and on the words keep flowing.
The scribes working on the Bible are spending years of their collective lives copying words that were already written long ago. They are not vying for a byline or filing for a copyright. Yet few would argue that they haven’t been given an extravagant privilege in the doing of this work. They are giving their time and their craft to perhaps the only words that really matter.
The book of Ecclesiastes says, “Of making many books there is no end...”
What would happen if we stopped pumping out so many words, even for a 24-hour period, and instead paused to reflect on and live with the words that have already been written?