One of the worst parts about having my briefcase stolen is that I lost my Bible and moleskine. Now, I wasn’t an avid notetaker, certainly not as much as most. I underlined a verse here and there, and I would go through a week or two when I would be writing all sorts of life changing tidbits of knowledge in my journal so I could reflect and be changed in the future. But for the most part, I only had a few things in there.
But those few things were comfortable. My moleskine had a feel to it after I had put it in my back pocket and sat on it so many times. I had a clever Easter haiku. My Bible would easily open to 1 Corinthians because I once was reading it while it was lightly raining, and the pages were forever morphed by their encounter. A friend wrote that it was to me from “Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.” Not very inspirational, but it made me laugh. It was comfortable.
I am realizng that a lot of my spirituality was found in the comfort of that thinline ESV and it accompanying jounral. Every time I thought about buying a new part, I ouldn’t bring myself to do it because of what I had invested in those items.
Potentially, I put too much into them. My faith shouldn’t feel rattled because I am reading from a different copy of a translation of a copy of a copy of what Paul wrote. The words are no different (sticking with the ESV). This one is not red-letter (which is good or bad, depending on who I’m talking to).
But in thinking about it, there is a lot of our faith that gets tied up in comfort. The church building, the people, the translation. And I am not sure if that is innherently bad, but I am going to try and guard myself into turning that bound group of pages into my faith, which can be aided by the comfortable, but can’t be defined by it.
