A Record of an Encounter

Scripture, we know, is not simply an oracle; it is not simply lapidary remarks dropped down from heaven and engraved in stone….  No, scripture is a record of an encounter….  Here in scripture is God’s urgency to communicate; here in scripture is our mishearing, our misappropriating, our deafness, and our resistance.  Woven together in scripture are those two things, the giving of God and our inability to receive what God wants to give....  We need to read the Bible around Christ, and read it, therefore, in the confidence that our own mishearing and misapprehending, our own confusions and uncertainties about the text and about the matter with which it deals will be part of God’s triumphant work in us.

– from Ray of Darkness, by Rowan Williams