On Reading Scripture Slowly

The discipline of reading Scripture slowly is the discipline of refusing the cultural pace. We have been formed to skim. We read for utility, for the next bullet point, for the takeaway. Slow reading — the kind the early church called lectio — is the deliberate undoing of that formation.

Take a single verse. Read it three times. Once for the words. Once for the music. Once for the invitation. Then sit. Don't rush to a takeaway. Don't draft a tweet. Just stay.

What you discover, the longer you stay, is that the Word is not a substance you extract but a person you meet. He has more to say than the first reading lets through. The slow reading is the listening reading, and the listening reading is the praying reading, and the praying reading is the changed reading. None of it can be hurried.

The pattern is older than we are. The grace is older than the pattern. We come to it not as students at the head of the class but as children at the foot of a long table, where the meal has been ready for a while and the chair has always been waiting for us. Sit. Receive what has already been given. The day will be longer than you think, and the bread will be enough.