Percy Jackson 🤝 Paige Jackson
I used to think I was related to Percy Jackson (yes, the so called lightning thief). Matter of fact, I thought anyone with the last name Jackson was some sort of kin to me. I had a big family.
Over this summer (2022) I started to reread and finish the Percy Jackson series from my childhood. Back in elementary school, I caught up to the unreleased book, unfinished series timeline and moved on without coming back. I always regretted not going back to finish what I had started, especially because I was related to the guy. With the break from college and the free time that summer provided from homework, I wanted to pick back up on reading for pleasure. The first series I ran to was the infamous Percy Jackson & the Olympians, then read my way through The Heroes of Olympus series. To be completely honest, I audio booked a good bit of Percy Jackson & the Olympians from a Spotify podcast by an 10 (?) year old boy that I am pretty sure will be taken down because it might be illegal. He was delightful. I felt right at home amidst the mispronounced words.
Little did I know that the adventures of a high school demi-god would slowly soften my tired heart to story, humor, and lightheartedness. More than that, reading these 2 series, 10 books, changed the way I read the Bible.
Growing up in the church, I had always read the Bible looking to find myself throughout the pages. Taking the words I read and trying to apply them directly to my own life. To say the least, things got a little confusing while reading the Old Testament. I don’t know about you, but my life doesn’t look like living in the dessert or making animal sacrifices. I have since learned that an important part of reading scripture is understanding that it’s part of a bigger narrative.
Why is it important to remember there is a whole story? Well, if we just pick up reading somewhere in any book, we won’t know who is being spoken to, who is speaking, or what caused the situation or conversation to happen. When we do that, especially in scripture, it can be a dangerous game. Maybe we read God’s justice out of context and only see it as unprovoked anger when in reality, there is a just reason for the actions of God. When we read a promise of God out of context, we could suddenly think that we are the ones who are promised descendants more numerous than the stars instead of Abraham!
Just like in your personal story, it’s the same in the Bible: context matters.
Reading through the flow of a fiction book has been a huge gift for my quiet time. Because I kept coming back to Percy and his friends, I tried to remember the whole storyline more clearly and pay attention to the names of people in conversations. I’m not sure about everyone else, but it can be easy for me to brush over biblical names because they (1) are normally weird, (2) are normally long, and (3) normally sink into the black and white pages that I have accidentally found my eyes glazed over while reading. But after reading Percy Jackson, my mind had gotten into the habit of paying attention to the speakers and trying to remember characters and imagine who they are and what they’re like. I was being re-trained tp remember plot lines and side characters and conversations held a few chapters back. Reading Percy Jackson helped get me out of the habit of taking each chapter or verse individually and thinking it was said for me. the Bible became more coherent and flowing because of my practice in reading fiction. I could not be more thankful to Rick Roidran for the stories he wrote and they ways they blessed me.
If you find yourself in a place where I was reading the Bible, reading everything as if it were for you, forgetting what happened the chapter before, and glazing over conversations and situations, I’d encourage you to pick up a fiction book. Allow yourself to soak in a story that’s a bit more digestible. Remind yourself of the unity that books have in their message. Then bring those lessons back to scripture to find a richer, and much more entertaining quiet time as you read the story of life and love!