Just The Right Size
Listening to Classic FM the other day I asked "Alexa what's the name of this tune," to which "she" replied "Bluebird" by Alexis Ffrench. I had never heard of this contemporary musician, who has over 3 million monthly Spotify listeners and is one of the most streamed classical artists globally.
But then again, some 12 million artists stream on Spotify. Why should I have heard of Ffrench? If I was to listen to one track of each artist for 8 hours a day, it would take me 50 years to hear them all.
A number exercise like this gives us an insight into our terrible smallness and finitude when faced with the magnitude of All Knowledge. In one human lifetime you and I have very little time.
People say that the Bible is a big book, but I want to argue that it's a Goldilocks Size for our short journey through this life.
The "infinity" of knowledge
Let's consider the vast banks of knowledge that are available to any one of us today.
In the world of science, one estimate puts the total number of scientific papers ever published at 100 million. It would take 8000 lifetimes to read them all, making our way through one paper a day five days a week for fifty years.
The Common Crawl Dataset, an internet snapshot used by Large Language AI models contains about 600 billion words - that would take 600 lifetimes for an average person to read.
We could engage in this kind of numerical exercise not only with history and science but with art, literature and back to music.
Each time we'd end up with information sizes vastly beyond the scope of any human being to read let alone grasp.
The Bible is Small
By comparison, the Bible is small, containing about 800,000 words. A little larger than War and Peace (580,000 words) and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (455,000) but smaller than The Works of William Shakespeare which runs at 880,000 words.
The Bible can be read in a mere 80 hours, by contrast to hundreds or thousands of years.
It's small enough to be grasped by a human being in a lifetime. The Bible can be read in a year by spending just 15 -20 minutes a day.
Our finitude explains in part - surely - why God works out his purposes through just one nation, so that the largest part of the Bible (the Old Testament) contains the story of just that one small nation (Israel).
We could not handle a "history of the world." This allows transient tiny creatures like you and I to grasp something of God's great plans through that one nation.
The Bible is Big
And yet, one should quickly add, the span of its contents, from poetry to Gospel to apocalyptic to prophecy to letter, and from one nation's story to the whole wide world, makes the Bible a big book.
Sufficiently big to be both interesting all the days of our lives and comprehensive to cover all the most important things we need to know.
Truth be told, the Bible is big enough to make it's contents inexhaustible over a single human life time. My father read the Bible through every year of his adult life. Many other believers make it their habit to read it often as they can. I remember my father telling me what every reader will acknowledge - that the Bible never grew old or dim.
The Bible is Divine
The Bible's purpose is to show us how to get right with the Creator God who we all know exists. The Bible makes us wise unto salvation. Its words bring light to the unbeliever and provide spiritual food for the souls of those who believe.
The reason the Bible speaks today, the reason it is alive and active is that it was inspired by God. The authors were in some amazing way - in a way that did not overrule their personalities or their location in history - moved along by the Spirit of God, so that while they wrote - indeed what they decided to write - turned out to be, nevertheless, the very words God wanted them to write.
We have in our hands the very words of God to mankind.
Read it!
Some people who say "the Bible is too big" or "boring" have never read it. If you have never read the Bible before, I suggest you start with a good modern translation like the NIV (New International Version) or the ESV (English Standard Version).
If you are not yet a believer start with one of the Gospels (stories of the life of Jesus, named Matthew, Mark, Luke or John). Mark, the shortest, is a good place to start. Read one small section a day, asking God beforehand to help you understand it.
If you want to read the whole in one year try one of these reading plans:
If you are a believer who has never read the whole Bible, or if you are a backslidden believer who has drifted away from God, again, these reading plans are a good resource.
"Your Word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path"
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