The World's Largest Bible

I am working this summer at the circulation desk of the ACU library. For the most part this means I sit around checking my e-mail, posting on my blog, and handling the odd patron who needs to check something out or send an international fax or something.

About twice during my morning shift, however, I get to witness something really odd and slightly disturbing. The ACU welcome center gives campus tours to prospective students and their parents and this invariably includes a visit to the library. They take them upstairs and proclaim the academic virtues of the school and then they descend and show them our "claim to fame." The World's Largest Bible. It is enclosed in a glass case that is sealed and protected from damaging elements. Those on the tour come and gawk in amazement over a Bible so large it prevents actual use. They are amazed and even inspired by such a mammoth book.

Maybe it is the cynic in me, but I wonder, What's the point? What is the purpose of so massive a book? Are we so in awe of the scriptures that we must create such massive images of it and fawn over them in near worship? Would we rather idolize a book than embody a way of life?

"I pause for reply"

A Room with A View to A Murder

Last night I, together with about 10-15 of my friends from church, watched the movie "Hotel Rwanda" about the 100 days of Genocide that gripped that country in 1994 and left nearly a million people dead.

Afterward we talked about our reactions to the movie. There was a combined sense of shame, outrage, and powerlessness to do anything about it. In the following discussion prayer was mentioned several times, but I really didn't feel like we had a good grip on what that prayer was for, or even what it was supposed to do.

Why do we pray? Is prayer the cop-out for our inactivity? (Oh, I'll not help you but I will pray for you.) Do we pray just so we'll feel better about a situation? Is prayer ever really about us? These are the questions spawned by our discussion of the movie.

Discuss . . .

Acting Lessons

We just started week two of rehearsals for the Abilene Summer Shakespeare Festival production of Julius Caesar. Let me tell ya, acting is tough. You have to become a whole new person, or in my case two new people, who you most likely have never met. Then you have to take a text and put bones and muscle and flesh to it. It is enacting the encarnation. Words on a page become living breathing people and situations when acted. In this way the Christian is called to become an actor by taking the text of the gospel and putting flesh and bones on it and living it out so that people can see it.