How to Pray When You Find the Bible Dead

Small Voice
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You read the chapter. You got to the end of it and nothing happened. No word for you in it, no sense that anyone was speaking — just paragraphs you've read before, and now you're closing the book and getting on with your day, wondering whether it's you. The man who wrote Psalm 119 loved the Scriptures more than most people ever have, and he still had to ask God to open his eyes so he could see anything in them. He prayed to be kept from empty things. He said his soul was stuck to the dust. This episode reads that part of the psalm, shows how the prayer is built — that he asks God for the thing he can't produce in himself — and ends with one thing to say out loud before you open it again. No promise the next chapter will feel different.

Episodes

  1. Aug 13

    How to pray when you're bored reading the Bible

    You're four verses in and you've stopped reading. Your eyes are still going but you're thinking about something else. It isn't hard and it isn't upsetting — it's just dull, and the honest version is you'd rather be on your phone, and you know it while you're sitting there with the book open. Psalm 119 was written by a man who loved the Scriptures more than most people ever have. In the middle of it he asks God to turn his heart toward them, and to turn his eyes away from worthless things. Every line of the stanza is something he asks God to do to him — not one is a promise to try harder. This episode reads it, shows how the prayer is built, and ends with one sentence to say out loud before you open it tomorrow. No promise you'll be less bored.

  2. Aug 12

    How to pray when God isn't saying anything through the bible

    You open it to hear from him. That's the whole reason. You read the chapter slowly and wait for something, and nothing comes — you understand the words, you could say what the passage is about, and none of it is for you. You've done that enough mornings now that you've quietly stopped expecting anything else. David opens Psalm 28 by naming the silence to God as the problem, and says that if God stays quiet he is finished. He calls him his rock in the same breath. This episode reads the psalm, shows how the prayer is built — including the turn at verse six, where he says God has heard him and nothing in the text says the silence broke — and ends with one thing to say out loud before you open it again. No promise the next chapter will be different.

  3. Aug 12

    How to pray when the Bible makes you feel worse

    You opened it because you were meant to. You read a chapter, and by the end of it you felt smaller than when you sat down. There was a line in there about how a person ought to live, and you are not living like that, and now you know it in writing. Psalm 130 was written by someone in the depths, and sung by people on the road up to Jerusalem. He doesn't argue with the standard. He agrees with it — if you kept a record of sins, who could stand — and then says something about God instead. This episode reads the psalm, shows how the prayer is built, and ends with one thing to say out loud tonight. He's still waiting at the end of it, and so might you be.

  • 3 Episodes

About

You read the chapter. You got to the end of it and nothing happened. No word for you in it, no sense that anyone was speaking — just paragraphs you've read before, and now you're closing the book and getting on with your day, wondering whether it's you. The man who wrote Psalm 119 loved the Scriptures more than most people ever have, and he still had to ask God to open his eyes so he could see anything in them. He prayed to be kept from empty things. He said his soul was stuck to the dust. This episode reads that part of the psalm, shows how the prayer is built — that he asks God for the thing he can't produce in himself — and ends with one thing to say out loud before you open it again. No promise the next chapter will feel different.

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