Eric's Beijing Diary

It's late Monday night now...actually early Tuesday morning. Yesterday, I mean Sunday, I went to Haidian Jiaotang. It was kinda crowded, because there was a group of students from Wheaton College traveling through.

After church, I rode my one-lock bike to Wudaoko for breakfast. Lucky Bird (the waitress) asked me about my Bible:

"Do you read the Bible every day?"
"Yes, I do."
"But don't you ever finish? Is it too hard?"

That's actually a pretty good question. I searched for a way to explain why it takes me so long to finish. It usually takes me about three years to read through the Bible. That's because I do a fair amount of repetition. Every day I read a chapter from Psalms, a chapter from Proverbs, and a couple pages from another book. And I don't use a bookmark for Psalms or Proverbs. I go to the last chapter that I can remember having read, and read the one following. Needless to say, this makes for a lot of repetition, not to mention the fact that I read through Psalms and Proverbs several times before I am finished reading the other books.

When Lucky Bird came by my table again, I asked her if she was familiar with Li Bai (the Tang Dynasty poet). Of course she said that she was. I told her that Li Bai's poetry was widely respected because he was a master at packing a great deal of meaning into to the few short lines of a simple poem, like this one:

A SONG OF AN AUTUMN MIDNIGHT

by Li Bai

A slip of the moon hangs over the capital;
Ten thousand washing-mallets are pounding;
And the autumn wind is blowing my heart
For ever and ever toward the Jade Pass....
Oh, when will the Tartar troops be conquered,
And my husband come back from the long campaign!

I told her that the Bible is a very, very condensed book and that it cannot be read in a hurry if one really wants to understand it. She said, "Yes, I understand! I really want to read it sometime!"

"Lord, whence are those blood drops all the way
That mark out the mountain's track?"

"They were shed for one who had gone astray
Ere the shepherd could bring him back."

"Lord, whence are thy hands so rent and torn?"
"They are pierced tonight by many a thorn."