The lake experience on Tuesday was very interesting. When we read the story of Joel it seems like just another book of the Bible. When we had to read it for homework, I read it out of the Bible. While reading it out of the Bible it was choppy and did not flow very well. I did not really get any impactful revelation from reading it. Then I read the pdf file and it seemed more like a piece of literature. While reading Joel from the pdf it flowed and made more sense. It helped me realize that the Bible is a piece of literature, not just the Bible. Often we think of the Bible as Gods word to us, not as literature, but indeed it is literature.
While reading Joel outside to nature it brought a whole new element. Just like reading Joel without the scripture references brought a new aspect, so did reading it out loud outside. Reading it outside brought a new element because it helped you to understand and focus on the rawness of what Joel was trying to tell the people. I specifically enjoyed the reading it out loud part of it. I am not going to lie I was not yelling it, I was barely saying it out loud but I still understood the point of it. There was a huge difference between reading it to oneself and saying it out loud. While reading it out loud it helped one to understand the authority and urgency that Joel was trying to get across. The words almost seemed to come alive and held new meaning. Hearing it also helped me to understand the context of the entirety, and the book as a whole.
So many times when we read the Bible we just read a couple of verses. We think we get the complete understanding, but we often just get a little snippet of what was meant to be understood. This exercise showed me that we should take the time to read the entire book of the Bible as a piece of literature, not just verse.
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