Tonight I am studying in the library for the second time in my college career.
(Okay, well, right now I’m writing a blog post. But before and after this, I’m studying.)
As a result, I am also listening to music using earbuds for the first time in who knows how long.
Headphones used to be a staple of my school mornings, essential for drowning out the annoying and profane soundtrack provided by the kids on a public school bus ride. But now that I’m in college there are coffee shops with the radio on and laptops and my roommate’s awesome speakers that practically equip our dorm with surround sound. So I haven’t used my earbuds in forever.
I’d forgotten how much more intimate it is this way. How the music echoes in your mind and grates against your bones and hums through your blood and caresses your skin from the inside out.
It’s a totally different experience.
And maybe this is stretching it a bit, but it makes me think of the way I feel when it’s the first time in a long time that I’ve read the Bible for myself and on my own and not for school or during a sermon.
It’s more intimate. It becomes part of you. When you’re discovering it for yourself it steeps into the corners of your soul the way it simply can’t when all you’re doing is hearing it in the open air.
And when the Word of God is part of you, things change.
