A Deep, Deep Mine

Keller talks about a conference he went on many years ago and how what he learnt changed his attitude to the Bible:

 The speaker, Barbara Boyd, said to us, “Sit for thirty minutes and write down at least thirty things you learn from Mark 1:17,” which reads, “‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’” Then she instructed us, “Don’t think after ten minutes and four or five things written down that you’ve figured it out. Take the whole thirty minutes and try to get to thirty things observed.” So we sat silently and did as told. And indeed, after about ten minutes I was pretty sure that I’d seen everything there was to see in these fifteen words. I put my pen down and wanted to spend the rest of the time daydreaming, but everybody else looked like they were still working, so I picked up the pen and started pondering some more. Then I began to notice new things. If I imagined what the sentence would mean without one of its words, it was easier to assess what unique meaning it brought to the sentence. That gave me the ability to get another two or three insights around each term. Then I tried to paraphrase the whole verse, putting it into my own words. That showed me more levels of meaning and implications that I had missed. 

At the end of the thirty minutes, the teacher asked us to circle on our papers the best insight or most life-changing thing we had gotten out of the text. Then she said, “Okay, how many of you found this most incredible, life-changing thing in the first five minutes?” Nobody raised their hand. “Ten minutes?” Nobody raised their hand. “Fifteen minutes?” A few hands. “Twenty minutes?” A few more. “Twenty-five minutes?” Even more. That session changed my attitude toward the Bible and, indeed, my life. 

Thy Word is like a deep, deep mine; 

and jewels rich and rare 

are hidden in its mighty depths 

for every searcher there.

(Edwin Hodder)

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I tried this out on the last verses of Isaiah 40 and it was so fun! I so often read way too fast without really engaging my brain and studying and meditating and cross referencing and applying. I'm so thankful for having come across this in Keller's book.