The stream of God is filled with water.
Psalm 65:9
My wife and I picked raspberries yesterday, and were joined by our son-in-law, Jeremy, and daughter, Nikki. The bushes were loaded with berries, but soon I noticed I could return to the area I had just picked and find still more berries I missed.
When I commented on this, Jeremy made the interesting comparison of berry-picking and reading the Bible.
Have you ever done this? You reread a part of the Bible you’ve read before, and all of a sudden you discover something you never noticed before?
It’s not that God’s truth is in constant flux – with the Lord frantically readjusting his opinions to match those of contemporary culture. Instead, God has more truth to show us than we can discover on our first picking.
This last week, five of us disappeared into the Bob Marshall Wilderness for a week. On the last day of hiking, I set out early to reach the van and drive it a few miles closer to the trailhead.
As I hiked along the trail I noticed footprints. Another hiker we met had hiked out the day before, so the fresh prints were made after that. Deer tend to move at night or early dawn, and there were mule deer tracks on top of the footprints, so the hiker probably came through late yesterday.
The foot tracks on the trail were slightly bigger than my own, so I concluded it was a male. He wasn’t camping, however, because the tracks came in and retraced their steps.
The more I focused on the tracks, the more I saw. The tracks were not the deep tread of hiking boots, but came from a running shoe. I’m fairly tall and have a long stride length, but his were considerably longer. He had to be jogging. From the point he turned around to the trailhead was four miles, so he was on an eight mile run. He must be in decent shape.
You could see where he stood still once. He didn’t stop to rest or he would have shuffled his feet. He probably stopped to get a quick drink – which meant he was carrying his own water – but wasn’t using a camelback.
The longer I hiked, the more I saw.
Some people think of God’s Word as being like a cookie. Once you gobble it down, there’s nothing more to be enjoyed. When I was in college, I worked as a janitor with a delightful, older man. He whistled cheerfully, he whistled constantly, he whistled well. But he only knew one tune.
The more we ponder God’s Word, the more we will hear the many themes and harmonies.
It’s exciting whenyou find a big, fat, ripe berry you had previously overlooked.
(copyright 2012 by Marty Kaarre)