Lent #27: Discipline 6 of 7—reading and meditating on scripture.

Sin is lurking at the door.

(Genesis 4:7)

I don’t suppose that’s the most inspiring verse in the Bible—one worth Lenten meditation. Linda and I found ourselves there, in Genesis four, because of our reading aloud to one another Steinbeck’s East of Eden. The deeper we get into the book, the more we realize it really does have to do with how Cain found himself east of Eden. Great writers, like Steinbeck or Melville, seem to care about such Bible stories more than we who make big claims about the Bible.

Anyway, it caused us to read aloud to one another the story from the fourth chapter of Genesis that shapes Steinbeck’s novel. Of all people, I should know the story. I got paid to understand, explain, and make sense of such things. But, as we reread the story to one another, I marveled: What a strange, strange story—well worth a good Lenten meditation.