Bucket List Practice #4 - Sacred reading

Throughout the month of January I am creating a Bucket List in which I will suggest one New Year’s Practice each day that will give you a taste of living an integrated life for 2011.  (By integrated, I mean one in which your faith, your character, your relationships, your responsibilities--all elements of your life--are in agreement.)  Each one is meant to be exercised in one day. Please feel free to share about your experience in the comments section below.  We will move through four different themes of living an integrated life.  The first week January we'll explore practices related to our relationship with God.

Today's practice is sacred reading. By sacred reading, I mean the divine writings that are the foundation of your beliefs. For Christians, that is the Bible.  But it may well be the Sunday morning comics for you. Who knows?  I have included sacred reading as an integrated practice because the authors of the Bible refer to scripture as the bread of life--the spiritual nourishment that strengthens a person's character.  A lot of New Year's resolutions focus on eating healthier, but does that ever include soul food? (I don't mean fried chicken and greens.) 

When it comes to spiritual dieting, it is true that you are what you eat.  As Jesus said to his followers, who you are flows from what is in your heart.  So if your life has been feeling like an upset stomach lately (i.e., making poor decisions, mistreating people, feeling depressed, cynical, or envious), evaluate what you have been feeding your soul. A steady diet of sacred reading offsets the junk food that we consume from TV, tabloids, the internet, and even from conversations. It gives us a bigger picture of life. It helps us know what God wants from us.

So today, I suggest a reading of the hearty poem in Psalm 119.  And you might need to lean back and loosen your belt when you're done.