Reading… and Thinking

Of course “new” isn’t the only goal. Being reminded of things we know is a good thing by itself. But if there isn’t something fresh to make us take notice, the reminder may not do us any good. To help us avoid the inattention caused by familiarity, we sometimes have to deliberately do something different.

What can we do? Well, one trick that sometimes works is to read it out loud—and try to put emphasis and inflection into it. This works especially well when you can read it out loud with someone else. All of a sudden, it seems different, fresher.

Another approach is to try to put yourself into the account, as if you are there. If it’s history: what would it look like, smell like, feel like to be there? What are the emotions people are feeling? For poetry, as here, we can try to get into the mind of the writer. What would cause this poet/songwriter to compose this piece?

In Psalm 1, can we imagine the poet having experienced following the advice of someone who turned out to be wicked? Having spent time in the company of sinful people? Having been a scoffer himself? Or perhaps it was someone he loved who had gotten off on a bad path, hung out with the wrong people, and made a wreck of their life. Anyone like that in your life?

In contrast, he seems to have experience with the opposite as well—spending high-quality time with his Bible, finding (maybe to his surprise!) that there is genuine delight to be found there. He has found this to be a dependable source of “water” in dry times, such as a tree by a stream finds. Have you experienced this? If not, have you given it a chance? Are you willing to try?

And this figure of the tree by the stream gives us an opportunity to explore another way to avoid inattention. Are you familiar with cross-references? Many Bibles have a column of cross-references in the middle of the page, or running down one side. These are tremendously valuable, although they require a bit of work to use. When you find yourself not getting anything new out of a familiar passage, try following up the cross-references.

Here in the verse about the tree, most Bibles will have a cross-reference to Jeremiah 17:8. Whenever you follow up a cross-reference, it almost always pays to read a bit of context around the verse you are sent to. In this case, we find verses 5-8 are an expansion by Jeremiah on this figure. He contrasts the shrub in the desert, with a tree by a streambed. Even if there’s no water flowing, there’s water down in the ground, and the tree finds it.

Ever had any “dry” times in your life? Felt like you were withering, emotionally or spiritually? Where can you find “water” to sustain you? It comes from God’s word, the psalmist tells us. It’s a deep resource, in other words it has to have been absorbed when times weren’t dry.