Have you ever met someone and you know their face is familiar and you know them but can’t think where from? I have great difficulty with this one, especially if I can’t place the person in the right context. It happened recently. I saw a guy at choir and couldn’t determine if it was someone I knew from tennis or not, because he was dressed differently. In the end I realized it was.
This weekend my husband kept thinking he knew this guy but couldn’t figure out where from. It turns out he is our new mayor and his face had been looking down at us from election posters everywhere. So in this case he didn’t actually know him but he knew the face.
A similar thing happens with crossword puzzles, which Mick and I are both big fans of. Sometimes all that’s needed is one or two of the letters from connecting words and suddenly what had been incomprehensible before starts to make sense. Or it helps you realize you were on the wrong track with what you were thinking and points you in the right direction. It’s the same with the bible.
Sometimes you need to put the verse or passage in context, looking at what goes before it and what comes after it, to work out what it is really saying.
Taking a verse in isolation or even a passage in isolation can be risky and raise a lot of problems. We can end up with some very wacky ideas that way. And people have. That’s how some strange cults and sects have come into being. We need to weigh up what the whole bible says on a subject, not pluck random verses out that appeal to us and disregard other teaching in the bible on the same topic.
It’s certainly a case of the more we read and study God’s Word, and allow the Holy Spirit to take the words and enlarge our understanding, the more God will reveal of Himself to us. So read the Bible diligently and make sure to keep it in context.
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