Approaching the Bible 2 – digging in

Recognising a desire to dig deeper into the Bible is already a response to His call… it’s an awareness that there is treasure waiting to be found… Life waiting to be breathed in… a ‘deep calls to deep’ response taking form.  Beautiful.

I’d heard and read the Bible my whole life but did not always have the desire to dig into it.  I thought I did but when the change came I could see how I’d read the Word with a kind of attitude that I already knew what it said and because I already felt like I knew – my understanding was only to a certain place.  But through the strange collision of tragedy and having more time, new questions were immediately present, and others began to bubble to the surface, so I went to the Word with a new set of eyes than previous… looking for Scriptures to help me in a moment of difficulty… or to find the proof of what I wanted to say went out the window and the primary driver became “well what DOES it say?!?!??”

I swam around in that for a year or so… and found light going on in old places… deeper answers came with a different set of eyes… and then a new idea came which was this…

I’d been thinking on Jesus childhood/early life and how little there is about it in the New Testament when I decided to read the Old Testament books of the Law – specifically like a screen-play complete with costume descriptions, cultural context, sets and backdrops.  Since we know Jesus family were law keeping people, the OT could paint a much increased picture of what His early life would have been like than just going on the NT references to it. 

What I found in the OT… with my new eyes… was a wonderland of incredible depth.  I kind of forgot about my original motivation but found SO much to follow the trails of… I spent about 2 years just bouncing all over Scripture from the mysteries I saw in just ONE chapter of the OT. 

I don’t tend to read other books… though I may check, if I’m on a new trail, that my thinking isn’t way off beam with Mr Google – using commentaries and websites whose ‘statements of faith’ are easily accessible and on point… but the discovery journey has become something I love and want HIM to lead me on rather than reading from other people’s discovery journeys.  But along the way have found other journeyers delighting in the call-response of the Word Life and entering into the joy of others discoveries, so often shared, is a big part of it too 🙂

Sometimes I study quite specific topics, and sometimes I just read or listen – but with the understanding that even the passages that can be drop-dead-boring on a given day, or out-of-the-ballpark-WEIRD – all matter.  All lay a form or frame that is building… which God can pop a light on inside of anytime He wants… and for now my job is just to take it in until that happens.  I use a few apps on my phone – including one that I can play early morning when I don’t feel ready to read – or out in the car.  And also my paper Bible which always somehow feels the most personal 🙂

The single best resource I’ve found – which is the one I use 80% of the time – is a free download ..  It has several translations for free and others can be added at a reasonable price.  I have the free plus paid to add NIV as it’s what I’m most familiar with.  It has a search bar and will bring up every usage of a word or phrase in the Scripture which enables fast searching – and paper concordances simply can’t be big enough to list all the different usages.

Sometimes I copy & paste a whole book, or section or chapter into a Word doc – having made a three column table with the Scripture in the first column… writing things I notice in the second column, and then questions and wierdnesses in the third column.

Sometimes I do word or phrase studies… same thing… three columns with the same headings as above and see what emerges.  I’m currently swimming around in ‘the fear of the Lord’ and ‘wisdom’…  There are 209 uses of the word wisdom, 134 that contain both the words fear and Lord, and 334 of fear.  This program makes it possible to look at all of those in a few hours which generates new understandings… questions… linkages…

The crazy wonderful thing is the more I read, the more questions/wonderings arise.  But the awe that grows in me is worship… He is amazing and His Word is intricately beautiful – a place of never ending depth and artistry.