Leaves, trees, and forests

As for God, His way is blameless;
The word of the Lord is refined;
He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him.
(Psalm 18:30 NASB)

Your word is a lamp to my feet
And a light to my path.

(Psalm 119:105 NASB)

Imagine taking a tree leaf and examining it with a magnifying glass – top and bottom. Then feel its peaks and valleys, smell its smell, listen to the sound it makes when it moves. Notice veins or stoma or other unique features. All of this would help you understand the leaf. Now take that leaf and put it in its context. How does it attach to the tree? What is its relationship with the tree? What does a year in this life of the leaf on the tree look like? Now shift your gaze out a bit and imagine that leaf on that tree in the middle of a timber or forest area. How is that tree like or unlike the other trees? Does it work together with the other trees? What other plants and animals live with or around the tree? All three of these perspectives are valid – and important – for understanding that leaf, just as a study on a verse, or a chapter, or a section of the Bible helps us to hear from God. While I am no expert on botany or ecology, or even Biblical studies, I do know that we can learn a lot when we look at something from many different points of view.

I have an idea for a Bible study that I want to develop, a 5-6 part focus on the sections of the Bible. Sometimes we study God’s word by looking at one particular verse and studying its context, exploring its Hebrew or Greek meanings, and meditating on it in our spirits. What do you want me to understand from this God? How do I apply it to my life? Sometimes we look at a passage from scripture – a whole chapter, a whole psalm, a whole story. We explore its context, what it says, it’s life application. And sometimes we take time to study a whole book of the Bible.

However, the study I’m wanting to do is to introduce people to the Bible as one long story with several sections – Creation, Covenant, Communication, Christ, and Community. Instead of focusing on a single verse, a chapter, or even a book, I want to examine the way God speaks about these five themes in the Word. Why is God as Creator important? Why is Covenant such a pervasive theme in scripture? What can the Psalms and Proverbs teach us about communicating with God? Why was the Jesus-as-Messiah (or “Christ”) such a huge event for the Jews of that day? And what does it mean to live in a Holy Spirit-empowered community? Now I haven’t written the book yet, so I would prefer you not steal my ideas [smile], but I guess the point is that our perspective on the Word can change, yet God still has something to teach us.

No matter how we look at God’s Word, may we still grow in our understanding of who he is and who we are in relationship to our God of the Universe.

God,

May your Word be living, active, and sharp within our lives. May it be a lamp for our feet and a light for our path. As we seek you through your Word, help us to have spiritual eyes and ears to understand what you are teaching us. Help us to look at your Word from a variety of perspectives so that we can have a better understanding of your holy perspective. Guide us we ask in Jesus’s name. AMEN.

For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  (Hebrews 4:12 NASB)

You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, so that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I am commanding you. (Deuteronomy 4:2 NASB)

“Be careful and listen to all these words which I am commanding you, so that it may go well for you and your sons after you forever, for you will be doing what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 12:28 NASB)