Can you imagine riding in a chariot in Bible times? What would it be like with no a/c, no radio, no CD/MP3 player, no video player, no phone? What would you do?
Now, imagine that you were not just traveling across town but traveling a great distance. There was a treasurer from Ethiopia who had gone by chariot “to Jerusalem to worship” (Acts 8:27) and was again “sitting in his chariot” on his way home (8:28). What would you be doing? The distance of his journey (one way) was over 1,000 miles. Think about it. One-thousand miles could take about one month to travel in those days. How boring! What would you do in a chariot for a month, without the modern amenities and conveniences of today?
You know the events of Acts 8 and what this man was doing—he was sitting in his chariot and “was reading Isaiah the prophet” (i.e., “Scripture,” v. 28, 32, 25). And, interestingly, he was apparently reading it out loud, for verse 30 states that Philip “heard him reading the prophet Isaiah.”
Of all the things this man could have been doing, he was reading aloud from Scripture. He had just left worship—didn’t he have enough God and enough Bible to last him a while? Wasn’t he “churched out”? Why not take some time for himself, sit back, relax, do something that he enjoyed?
If you were that treasurer, what would you have been doing? Or, consider it from this vantage point—suppose you were going to ride as a passenger (not even have to drive) for a whole month—what would you do? Would you “catch up” on your sleep? Would you listen to an audio book? Would you download and watch an entire television series? Or, would you, like the treasurer, decide to read your Bible? Although he had just been to worship, apparently he could not get enough of the Word of God, and even when he had difficulty understanding some parts, it did not stop him.
Did you know that if you purchase the Bible on audio recordings, it takes about 72 hours to listen to the Bible all the way through? How many hours will you spend in your car this week? This month? This year? How many times could you listen through the Bible this year, just while you’re driving in the car? The New Testament takes about 20 hours of listening. For some of us, we could listen to the entire New Testament in a couple weeks easily. What if you set a goal to listen through the New Testament once a month for the rest of the year? By the end of the year, you could have listened to it 12 times.
Treasurers usually can measure worth or value quite handily; the treasurer in Acts 8 knew there was great value in using his time to study God’s Word. What do you value today? What do you treasure, even while you travel?