“Seriously?”
I asked. “How can anyone who speed reads
really understand what they are reading?
I’ve heard people say that “speed reading” really isn’t possible; at
least not for comprehension.”
“But I’ve
got to try,” countered my friend. “There
are so many books I want to read and I just don’t have the time.”
“Well,
good luck with that,” I said. “I’ve
found the only way I can understand what I’m reading is to really “read it, one
word at a time!”
Those who
would take on the challenge of speed reading miss out on more than gleaning two
or three words out of a paragraph can give them. Getting the “gist” of a story is not nearly as
engaging as reading to gain understanding of feelings and all the emotions that
descriptive words can convey. It seems this technique would create more
questions than answers in an informative article; and when reading for pleasure,
that would not be “pleasure” since words are what forms the pictures in our
minds.
Sometimes,
even as Believers, because of our various, very busy lifestyles we “speed read”
through God’s Word. We scan the
paragraphs (if it’s a devotion with an anecdote), or verses, looking for
information we probably already know and feel that since we have the “gist” of
what a verse or even several verses say, -- especially if we are familiar with
the passage from our childhood SS class—we’ve got it!
Very
often, however, that is not the case. Oh
sure, we may know the verse, maybe even be able to recite it, but do we know,
when we “speed read,” what the Lord is saying to us at that time? God uses His Word to speak to us. A specific passage doesn’t always tell us the
same thing. Depending on what is
happening in our lives at that moment, the message may change, become clearer
and set us in a direction we had never even considered before.
God’s
Words are timeless. There is so much to
understand. It isn’t possible to know it
all! Consider how many times you’ve
heard a sermon on the same topic.
Perhaps it’s several verses from the Creation story, the Parables, the
end times, Abraham leaving his home country, the Gospel and on and on! Each time you hear it, you have the potential
to glean something different. That is
partly because your faith walk (in theory) changes daily because you grow, but
also because whomever is preaching the sermon can have a completely different
perspective on the subject!
Even
recently I have been listening to sermons on a subject I felt I knew reasonably
well. The perception of the Pastor has
been completely different than I’ve ever heard before. That causes me to stop, and often after the
service dig deeper into God’s Word to understand. We are even instructed by God to check to see
that those who are teaching us are Biblical.
So sometimes, questions are good!
But my
point is, speed reading is not a good method to gain understanding from any
book. But it’s especially a bad choice
when the reading material is the Bible.
So, I encourage you to pick up God’s Love Letters and read them like you
understand He wrote those letter to you; like you would if it had been your
spouse who sent you a special message. It’s
the best reading you’ll ever do!
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