Sunday School with a Master

I spoke earlier of Fred Craddock -- the Rev. Dr. Fred B. Craddock, scholar, educator, pastor and inspiration most familiarly called by most of his flock simply, Fred.

Though he suffers from Parkinson's, is 84, not too long ago went through a siege of Guillain-Barre syndrome and no longer preaches regularly at the church he founded in Cherry Log, Georgia, he is, at the moment conducting Sunday school classes there for a few weeks and we attended yesterday. 

Rapt, intensely engaged were the folks who filled the fellowship hall of the little church listening to the master who would quite hate my calling him that.  As a speaker he is soft of voice and easy of manner and the points he made were gentle but challenging and many hands were diligently making notes. He spoke for an hour, beginning with a prayer thanking the Lord for his kind gift of "butterfly mornings and whipoorwill evenings." 

His challenge on that 14th of January was to the people to set as their task to read the entire New Testament between now and Easter, March 31st. He urged them to read it right through, not studying the text, not using outside references or dictionaries or commentaries; rather, he said, "Just let it happen. You won't memorize much along the way (or you won't know you have memorized it; you will end up with "forgotten memories." Just let it happen. 

I'm going to. I've enlisted. 

As I continue to work to promote my own forthcoming book, I am committed to reading through that entire part of THE BOOK.

Wanna join me in this Bible Non-Study?