A long time ago I spent two summer months in Brussels with a group of international Christian students – there were a couple of dozen of us.
We lived together downtown in a narrow house with many rooms that climbed four high-ceilinged stories up stairways of many steps.
One morning I got up early, came out of my room, and was surprised to see a girl at the end of the hall sitting on the floor at the very top of the staircase. Her feet rested one step down and she was bent forward, elbows tucked close to her ribs, hair curved across her face like a bird’s wing. Her forearms rested on her legs and knees; she was reading a bible.
She sat while most of the house slept, having her inconvenient time of devotion in as private a place as she could find in a house full of people. A slight, still figure with something to do, make-shifting a time and place to do it.
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…reads the bible this year