What Blackberry Picking Taught Me About Reading My Bible

Photo by Mario Mendez on Unsplash

At the moment, where I live in the UK, there’s an abundance of blackberries on bramble bushes almost everywhere you look. I’ve never seen so many! Those black, jewel-like clusters are so inviting, so my children and I have been out there collecting pots and pots of them to make preserves and desserts galore. 

I’ve been watching how my two kids go about collecting them, and they have two very different approaches to the activity, and it struck me that there is plenty we could learn from them about how we approach Bible reading.

Like blackberry picking, there is much goodness to be found in the pages of Scripture (much more goodness than berries, no matter how good they are!), but it is work to actually get the goodness. Is it worth it? Of course! But how we approach the work matters. 

Less talk, more action.

My daughter, who is six, complained after about ten minutes that she didn’t have as many blackberries in her pot as her younger brother. I peered at her collection, and she only had two or three!

And then I realized her issue — she had spent most of the time standing there, telling us all kinds of facts about blackberries, describing what the bushes are like, and boasting about how she was going to be the one to find the biggest blackberry. But she was hardly actually picking any! 

I wonder if we sometimes approach the Bible like this. It can be easy to list the things we know about a certain Bible passage, or talk about what we have read in the Bible previously. We can spend time shopping for Bibles, gathering resources like pens and journals. There’s a wealth of information about the Bible we can read.

But before we know it, we have run out of time to actually read the Bible. We need to guard ourselves from this, and prioritize actually sitting down to read the Scriptures for ourselves.

We know that the word of God is living and active, that it is sharper than a two-edged sword, penetrating our souls (Hebrews 4:12). But unless we actually read it, it cannot do its work in us. 

Look at God, not your circumstances.

The other thing hindering my dear little girl was that she spent so long looking at the thorns on the blackberry bush that she began to lose sight of the delicious fruit. My son (who is four) was charging in, letting the minor scratches brush off him, as he focused on his prize — those juicy berries! She, on the other hand, was becoming more hesitant the more she looked at those prickles, letting her fear of getting scratched stop her from both enjoying the moment and from picking the blackberries. 

This is an easy trap for us to fall into with our Bible reading, too. How often do we look at our own inadequacies and wonder if it’s worth putting in the effort at all? It can be easy to look at our lack of time, or the likelihood of interruptions, or the feeling of chaos in our mind, and be put off from even opening our Bibles in the first place.

When we know that God’s word changes us, pricks our consciences and causes us to repent, we can be hard-hearted and unsure we want to read it, at times. But when we stop and remember who it is we are encountering when we read the Bible, instead of focusing on our circumstances and fears, we can taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8).

There’s goodness to be had.

When speaking to the Israelites who had been giving him half-hearted offerings, in Malachi 3:10, God says, “‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.’” 

When I showed my daughter those glistening clusters of berries, and reminded her of the delicious feasts we could make with them, her eyes brightened and she threw herself into the task with new relish. She enjoyed both the afternoon and the armfuls of blackberries we gathered. 

May we throw aside everything that hinders us (Hebrews 12:1) and persevere in our Bible reading, enjoying the process and reaping the blessings that God is longing to pour out on us!