Moon-Letters

"Moon-letters are rune-letters, but you cannot see them," said Elrond, "not when you look straight at them. They can only be seen when the moon shines behind them, and what is more, with the more cunning sort it must be a moon of the same shape and season as the day when they were written. They are runes but can only be read in the moonlight."

J.R.R Tolkien in his best-selling classic The Hobbit illustrates a scene where Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins approach the elves for help in reading an ancient scroll.    

Such is with the Word of God. I remembered for nine years reading the bible, trying to decipher the text, all to no avail. I would go to bible studies, read it on my own, ask different people, but in the end I would be more confused than when I started; I would find more hypocrisy than truth; more riddles than clarity. Not soon after, I just gave up trying to figure out the bible altogether, and dismiss it merely as a book of nice stories, but nothing much different than Bulfinch's Mythology or Aesop's Fables.

After nine years I realized that the reason why I could not understand the bible was because I was going about it all wrong. I was trying to decipher it, to "figure it out." It was all heady stuff, purely intellectual. I realized that in order to truly understand the bible, I would need to read it in the same spirit in which it was written. The bible is no ordinary book. Yes it was written by man, inspired by God, but it was written as a means of communicating to God's people, as a means of giving us hope, purpose, instruction, and clarity.