No doubt about it, I’m a reader. I love reading. I remember as a young child sitting at the kitchen table reading the cereal boxes before school. Since I’ve retired, I have re-discovered the local library. Our city library isn’t large as libraries go, but it is part of a system. As such, I can go on-line, find the book I want and submit a request. If it isn’t housed locally, it will be shipped out to my library and I can pick it up there when it arrives.
I was reading a library book the other day and discovered that someone had taken a pen to the book and “corrected” the language of some of the characters in it. I thought who has the audacity to do that?
Seeing those corrections, however, took me back to my college days and English class. The professor abhorred “run on” sentences and there were always scribbled corrections on papers that contained them. I wonder what she would have done with the Apostle Paul’s writings.
If you have your Bible handy, turn to Ephesians 1 and read verses 3-14. In the original language that is one long run-on sentence. And a most marvelous “sentence” it is. There are no breaks in that sentence. It is as if Paul got started thinking about our wonderful relationship to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and all the blessings that are ours, and couldn’t stop.
As you read, dwell on some of his words … blessed/blessings, adopted, pleasure, praise, glorious grace, redemption, forgiveness, riches, lavished, love, hope, truth …. What a list. I think Paul was writing from the depth of his heart and it just poured out as he tried to convey all that God had done for him … and for us.
If you can, read it a couple times. Get in the middle of Paul’s stream of thought and let it carry you straight into the heavenlies and deposit you at the feet of our LORD.
