Cocoa Puffs and Second Thessalonians

This morning I was reading in First Timothy. This is Paul's chiefly counsel to the young pastor Timothy encouraging him to fight the good fight and to keep the faith.

Oddly, every time I read this chapter, I think of the incedent I had a few years ago at the breakfast table:

I have a weird kind of thing with my Bible. It is my most prized possession and so I treat it as such - to the n'th degree. When I write in it, there can be no mistakes. When I turn the pages, there can be no dog-earred pages. When someone 'borrows' my Bible to quickly look up something, I almost panic that they won't handle with the same care that I would. I don't put papers, bulletins or pens in it, because that would ruin the spine. I keep it in a canvas Bible cover to protect it from the elements, and I don't leave it lying around just any where.

So... imagine my panic. I pour myself some Cocoa Puffs, loaded down with frozen blueberries, and top it off with skim milk in a bowl half the size of a pickup truck. Chocolate cereal and blueberries make a dangerous color of milk. I sit down to read the very last chapter of 2 Thessalonians (the page of which is on the back of 1 Timothy - what I was reading this morning). For some unknown reason, I reach across the table and not yet being awake, I knock my bowl of puffs over - all over 2 Thessalonians 3. As an interesting side note, several of the verses that fell victim to the brownish-purple milk are about 'eating'. You never saw me move so fast in my whole life, scrambling for paper towels. I didn't care about the table cloth. I didn't care about the floor or the table or the chairs or the bowl. All I cared about was my Bible. I almost cried. The story has a good ending though. The only lasting damage surprizingly was that only that page of 2 Thessalonians/ 1 Timothy has a few wrinkles in it.

This event in my life, as insignificant as it seems, does remind me of an important principle that we find in the letters to Timothy about handling the Word of God. We are to preach sound doctrine (1 Timothy 1:3; 10-11). We are to pay close attention to our teaching (1 Timothy 4:16). We are to study so that we accurately handle the word of truth (1 Timothy 4:6-8, 2 Timothy 2:15). We are to preach the word in season and out of season (2 Timothy 4:2).

Someone teaching from God's Word has the solemn responsibility of doing it right. There is no excuse for doing a shoddy, sloppy, clumsy job. We are required to interpret the Word correctly and communicate exactly what God has said to us, not what we THINK He may be saying. The Christian's responsibility, especially the teacher, must communicate the Word as God has intended - heralding the gospel - and if someone is offended, so be it. Let the chips fall where they may. If we do not handle the Word of God accurately and boldly, then we are guilty of soiling the pages of scripture with our 'Cocoa Puffs' of clumsiness, bumbling around and not paying attention to what we're really doing. It amounts to Biblical vandalism - something I hope I am never guilty of.