I'm writing this to you from Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I'm spending a few days studying the Bible with a group of other pastors and trying to get better at my job.

If Santa Fe sounds exotic to you, don't get too excited—there's snow on the ground and it's about 30 degrees and we spend most of our time gathered around a conference table. The only time we get out is at night, for dinner. So aside from having better scenery and better chile rellenos, it's not that much different from being in New York with you.

I want to just take this minute to tell you again how important I think it is for any person who wants to understand and know Jesus (and I hope this includes you!) to read the Bible regularly. Read it and make it a friend and life partner.

The Bible is a crazy book. It's beautiful and terrible, self-contradictory and dated, but also the most relevant and personal thing you will ever read. The Bible describes a world that is both completely foreign to us, but also one that we know intimately.

Karl Barth, the 20th century German theologian, called it "the strange new world in the Bible." I love that image, because it captures for me the mysterious and wonderful world that the Bible paints. It is a world—a world that includes the one that we live in, but also includes the whole of the cosmos and the whole sweep of time.

The Bible is hard to read. It's not like opening any other book. It takes work and patience and discipline to come to appreciate it—but is that any different than any other life-long relationship?

We have a wonderful gift at Marble, Sister Carol Perry, who is one of the best Bible teachers around. Start making Carol's class part of your life. Whatever you do, however you choose to engage, pick up the book. Read it. Do a bit every week. You will love it.