“Read your Bibles!”- Mel Hurley

The other day I ran across the title of an intriguing book, Harnessing Your Earthworm.  Harnessing Your Earthworm, by Thomas J. Barrett, was published by Faber&Faber in 1949.  “What a wonderful title!”  I thought, “…and what an intriguing subject!”  What could it be about?  Why would anyone need to harness an earthworm?  Are there that many people in possession of an earthworm to warrant the publication of such a book?  Even if a sufficient number of people are in possession of an earthworm to warrant publication of books about earthworms – how many earthworm owners have a need to harness their earthworm?  What would a harnessed earthworm be harnessed to do?  Maybe it would pull a plow in an ant farm.  Maybe it would pull a wagon in a flea circus.  I just didn’t know.

If one had a need to harness one’s earthworm, one would surely need a book on the subject.  It can’t be easy.  An earthworm has no neck, no shoulders, no ribcage, no skeletal system at all.  And – they are slimy.  In addition, they are wriggly.  I suspect that if you were able to develop a harness tight enough to keep the earthworm from slipping out, it would be so tight that you would sever the earthworm into two parts.  There is an advantage to this in that you double your number of earthworms – but still, these earthworms remain unharnessed, which seems to defeat the purpose.  How would I ever get answers?

Perhaps the best thing to do is look at the book.

I did.  This is what I found out.  First, I found that the title isn’t Harnessing Your Earthworm, it is Harnessing the Earthworm.  That changes things – clearly.  The book is about earthworms, in general, and not individual earthworms owned by fanciers.  Then, as I read on I found out that the book is about using earthworms to naturally enrich the soil for farming.  The “harnessing” of the title isn’t literal, but metaphorical.  The book is about the metaphorical harnessing of earthworms generally.

Well, that makes sense then.  Mystery solved.

Lesson learned.

Look at the book.

The writing of many books is endless….Ecclesiastes 12.12

Amen.  It is a great testimony to the wide-spread devotion our Savior engenders (and primary evidence of global deforestation) that so many books are published each month about Jesus, about the Bible, about morality, about spirituality.  Many of them have even better titles than Harnessing the Earthworm.  Many of them are well thought out, well researched, and well worth our time.  My concern is that we forget The Book itself has the great claim on our time – not the latest tome describing 12 steps to a better relationship.

There is a great, qualitative difference between reading books about the Bible, and reading the Bible.  Reading a book (even a great book) on a Bible-topic is not the same as reading what the Bible itself says on that same topic.  It is God’s word that is God-breathed, alive and sufficient (II Timothy 3.16-17), not the best seller that makes a Jell-O salad out of proof-texts, pop-psychology, earnestness, and good intentions.

If we want to know about the Bible we need to pick it up and read it.

Every day.