Those four words can whisk you off to a land of Disney fairy tales or maybe family memorabilia of other times and places. They are the before and after of what was once the present. Like, once upon a time I believed in Father Christmas, confusing Santa Claus with God; after all I pictured both as old men with long white hair and beards. That was then.
Sometime I think that the Christianity that has shaped my life has been relegated to once-upon-a-time land. Reorganizing my cluttered bookshelves started me off on this train of thought. After oohing and aahing over long ago favourites and pondering the possibility of re-reads, I picked up my Bible.
Once upon a time, 70 years ago, a Bible was on the ‘bring with you’ list that I took with me when I chose life as a nun. Eventually I left convent life behind, but my bible accompanied me into the next stage of life. An upgrade of my Catholic school teaching qualifications stipulated a semester of biblical studies. I told myself that childhood familiarity with the Jesus story coupled with seventeen years of daily meditation on verses from the New Testament meant I would breeze through this requirement.
Instead the lecturer, Mercy Sister Shelia Byrne, changed my life – and my spirituality. Sister Shelia was a Scripture scholar and she taught me to read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John from the historical perception of a first century Jew, along with a current newspaper.
Up till this time I had never really twigged that the Jesus story was also the stuff of everyone’s life, of my life. In all the years since then my Bible, and the New Testament in particular, has been my go-to, a backdrop to Words from the Edge and before that, to Tarella Spirituality Sunday Gospel readings.
In the once upon a time of my life, most Christian families had a Bible sitting on the bookshelf among a mixture of biography, novels, encyclopaedias and outgrown Enid Blyton tales. Maybe it’s still there. But if the TV runs from morning to late night, the radio plays endless talkback or the latest must-listen to music and we feel the need to respond to the frequent mobile phone query “Where are you?” while messenger pings with can’t wait news, there’s not a lot of time to read the Christian Bible and even less to hear its relevance to 2024.
If your Bible has been sitting unread for many years, consider dusting it off and putting it on your stack of bedtime reading. An occasional slow, careful reading of something from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John can give familiar details a chance to be heard in your own voice and from personal experience.
Stop reading if a word or phrase catches your interest or imagination. It’s like a hook that the Spirit of God uses to bring something to your attention. Gospel reflection is like a cow chewing a mouthful of grass. It invites us to chew some of the words over and over again, ruminate on them, let them sink right into your minds and heart. There’s more than a chance that Scriptural words that once sounded tired and worn out are now relevant persona, even challenging . . . and alive with a freshness that is energising.
Judith Scully
Words From The Edge 