They Told You to Just Read It. Then They Watched You Quit in Genesis.

You have done the math on yourself in a pew.

Everyone around you nodding at the right time. You nodding too. A Bible on your lap you have owned for years and opened maybe a dozen times, and every time you tried on your own you got a few pages in and the floor dropped out. Names you cannot say. Laws about goats. A verse that seemed to mean the opposite of the one before it. So you closed it, quiet, and decided you must be the kind of Christian who needs a professional to do this for you.

You asked someone for help once. You got the line everybody gets. Just start reading and the Spirit will guide you. So you started. Nothing came. No voice, no warmth, no lightning. And instead of thinking the advice was lazy, you thought you were broken. You walked out feeling like less of a believer than when you walked in.

I have sat in that seat. The shame of being a grown person who loves God and cannot find the book of Habakkuk without the table of contents.

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