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In the Margins

What is your favorite place in the Bible? Is it a verse? A passage? A chapter? Or a book? Or maybe it's an entire section of the Bible. I've talked with some who are naturally drawn to John 3:16. I love that verse. Others are drawn to the nativity. Still others to the resurrection of Christ. For some, it's the letters; for others, the gospels; maybe the creation account; or for others the consummation of Revelation. Then there's the history, the law, the poetry, and the prophets. I've grown to love all of these. I could make an argument for why each of these could be my favorite. Yet none of them are.

For most of 2023 and 2024, God had me in a place where I had a lot of time on my hands. So out of boredom, I began to read between 10 to 14 hours every day. I've always enjoyed reading but I've never had this much time to do it before; so I assembled an impressive collection of Christian books. I read at least 30 books during that time. Several of them I read multiple times. There are a couple of favorites that I read so many times I could probably write them.

But my absolute favorite go-to book was the Bible. I was drawn to it from the first thing in the morning till bedtime at the end of the day. I spent the vast majority of my time in God's Word.

Now I've been a student of the Bible for 45 years. I'm not new to reading the Bible. However, during this season, I read it cover to cover—Genesis to Revelation.

It started innocently enough when my first Bible was delivered to me—a Gideon's Bible. I went to Genesis. That's the book that I've spent the most of my study time in over the last 30 years; so that's the first place I went. But this time when I reached the end of Genesis, I just continued through Exodus, then the rest of the Pentateuch, on to the other history books, and on and on until I'd finished Revelation.

I was quite pleased with myself. I just read the Bible—cover to cover—in less than a month. I'd never done anything like that before. But that presented a problem: At that point during this lonely season, I only had one other book—that I had already read three times. So I went back to Genesis.

But this time, before I reached Exodus, I made a new friend who also found himself with a lot of time on his hands. He was legally blind and had never read a Bible before. He had been to church a few times and was hungry to learn about God. So I went back to the beginning and started reading Genesis again. This time out loud—for about 14 hours per day. I read the Bible to him—pausing from time to time to answer his questions or to point out some lesson from what we were reading. We made it to Ruth before it was time for him to move on. I was so sad to see him go. He became a believer during that time. We made it a habit to pray together every night, and we spent countless hours talking about faith. During that time, I learned of the power of reading God's word out loud. What a blessing those days were.

After he left, I continued in Ruth and just kept reading. When I'd read all the way through Revelation I just turned back to Genesis and started again.

By the end of those 22 months, I'd read the Bible cover to cover 14 times. I now have a collection of Bibles I've read through—the NIV, NASB, New Living Translation, RSV, and the New King James Version. I've thoroughly loved every one of them. Several are study Bibles. I've enjoyed all the study notes, articles, charts, photos, and maps as well.

I've learned so much. God has taught me, changed me, corrected me, stretched me. He has allowed me to see myself in the world differently. He revealed himself each time I opened His Word. He gets bigger with every new paragraph.

But one of my favorite things about staying saturated in His word during this time is seeing how it fits together. How the story begins and develops. Seeing how God was working constantly to unveil this plan. How seemingly unrelated events unite to create an even greater understanding. How things that happened in Genesis start to make more sense when you read Paul's letters. How the Prophets only make sense when you remember the history from Genesis through the time of the Kings. How all of it makes more sense when all of it is fresh in your mind. It was in that revelation that I discovered where my favorite part of the Bible was (and no, I'm not going to say, "All of it!").

As I turned each page I was made more aware that God knew what was going to happen long before it happened. In fact, He was weaving together this magnificent web of people, events, triumphs, and failures in order to tell us a single story. Every event, every encounter was the result of countless events and encounters in the past—some separated by minutes, some by decades—but they always came together at exactly the right time. I began to realize that these were real people who lived in a real world—none of them lived in a vacuum.

Take for example the calling of Levi, the tax collector. Luke 5:27-28 tells us, "After these things, He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax office. And he said to him, 'Follow me.' So he left all, rose up, and followed him." Levi wasn't just a piece of scenery, with no personality, no family, and no past. He had lived a life; things had happened to him—some good, some bad. People had said things to him—some good, some bad. He had been born to specific parents, at a specific time, in a specific place. He had friends. He had enemies. He had been taught, disciplined, encouraged, and put down.

All of these things—and many others—conspired together to lead him to make a specific choice; which led him to a specific place, at this specific time—when Jesus would be walking past his tax office. And at the perfect time, Jesus looked at him and said, "Follow me." When Levi looked into the eyes of the One calling him, he saw the purpose that he didn't even know he had been looking for. And in an instant, he knew he had to follow.

A lot happened in Levi's life leading up to his first encounter with Jesus.

One of the things I have discovered from this season with God's Word is that God orchestrated every one of the events in Levi's life—from his birth to his parents, to his home, friends, relatives, education, and all the rest—to get him to the tax office in that state of mind, on that day.

The same is true of Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, John, and Zacchaeus (just imagine the lengths God went to establish and protect that sycamore tree).

My point is that God knows. He has a plan. That plan was complete in the mind of God from before the beginning. Which brings us to my favorite part of the Bible.

Take a minute to get your Bible in front of you (go ahead, I'll wait!). Now open your Bible to the first verse of the 1st chapter of the first book—Genesis 1:1. Got it? Good! Now direct your attention to that space just to the left of that first word—the margin before Genesis 1:1.

That space. That margin before the first act of creation, before the first word was written or spoken, God knew! Think about that for a minute. Before He did anything, He knew. He knew it all—everything from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21—and everything in between… and beyond.

In the mind of God, every word of the Bible was already written. Every life that would ever be lived had already been lived. Every choice had been made, every word already spoken, and every decision already made. All in that tiny little space to the left of Genesis 1:1.

"Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." (Psalm 139:16 NIV)

"All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world." (Revelation 13:8)

"For he chose us in him before the creation of the world." (Ephesians 1:4)

"He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake." (1 Peter 1:20)

He knew. He had a plan. And in the margin before Genesis 1:1, all of the universe's past, present, and future was already known by God Almighty.

And He started painting a picture.

I often return to that place and stare in wonder as I discover new connections in His Word. I'm drawn back to that origin. I find at times, while I lie in bed at night, I meditate on that instant before the beginning. And in that instant He was right here with me. Right now, at this moment. And now in this moment. In fact, He was already in all my moments. Yours too. Not that we were some sort of choiceless puppets on strings. No. We make choices. The fact is, that every one of all of our moments are now for Him. It has always been this way. And it always will be.

"I AM Who I AM." (Exodus 3:14)