I recently presented a simple challenge to attendees in a “Reading Scripture” class. This was what I asked them to do: Please read the following sentence and count the number of “f” in the sentence. Here’s the sentence, and you are invited to do the same (before you continue reading this post!).

Finished files are the result of years of careful scientific study combined with the experience that comes from years of reflection.

Did you read the sentence? Did you notice the number of “f”? It’s not a hard task, but surprisingly, many didn’t come up with the correct answer. How many “f’s” did you note?

In the class, many said they found five or six. Some said there was one more than that. The actual answer is that there are nine “f’s” in that sentence. (If you didn’t see them all, go back and try again.)

If you still don’t catch all of them, it is likely that you overlooked the “f’s” in the word “of.” Why is that? The simplest answer is that we don’t always read attentively. And that appears to be behind Jesus’ question.

More than once, Jesus asked the religiously trained people around Him, “Have you never read?” (For example, see Matthew 21:16, 42 or Mark 2:25.) He is not being mean. It is not a trick question. If you spend time in those passages where He asked the question, it becomes clear that He was inviting them to pay closer attention to what they had, in fact, already read or were already familiar with.

So, it’s a great question to ask whenever we open the Scriptures to read. Did you really read? Were you genuinely attentive to the very words that were inspired by the Spirit?