Origen & Scripture

What have I been doing in August? I have been reading on Origen (185-254 AD). Today I took out from the library a book by Peter W. Martens, Origen & Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford UP: 2012). I am about half way through the book. I took the book to Bukit Batok for lunch and later to Chua Chu Kang for dinner. Lord, your Words are more precious than my daily food. Martens wrote about Origen's sacrifices in his pursuit of scriptural scholarship: "Scriptural study was always in competition with some other activity or distraction." (p. 101). How true! For Origen, he had to give up or repudiate worldly possessions, food, clothing, sleep, and sex in order to devote to the study of Scripture. What about you?