Finding Treasures and Leaving Them There

Our family goes to the beach, every year. Lisa and I began our annual beach trips before our kids were born, and, with few exceptions, we have gone every year. Lisa and I like to walk on the beach, and we can't help but look for seashells along the way. It seems like there are always some beautiful shells just hiding in the sand. We squat down and sort through the crunched up remnants of shellfish homes. We almost always find treasures in the chips. 

The treasures, of course, are whole seashells. We find them tiny and large, lots of different colors. And we (almost) always bring them home. We have more seashells than we know what to do with. Lisa uses them brilliantly for home decorating. But we can't possibly use all our shells.

Seashells are meant to be picked up and enjoyed. Why just leave them in the surf?

I notice that a lot of Christians use the Bible that way. They find inspirational verses and pull them out, to put on bumper stickers and stationery. It's like these verses are scattered through boring, irrelevant Bible words, and we just need to dig through to find them. And when we find them, we take them home. We remove them from the author's flow of thought, and we use them for our own purposes. Maybe even decorating our homes.

We consider the context irrelevant. It doesn't matter where we find these treasures. We like what they say to us. Never mind what they meant thousands of years ago.

Maybe we should see Bible verses not as shells to be picked up, but as jewels in a crown. Yes, you could remove the stones from a crown, but part of their beauty is their setting. The gold prongs, and leaves, the depth and relief--all of this brings beauty to the jewels. Without the crown, they are just rocks, beautiful rocks, shiny rocks. But their meaning is diminished.

What if we found treasures in the Bible and left them where we found them? We should look at them often. But when we see them in context, we can really behold their beauty. We have to meditate on the scripture to find its depth. There is always more depth.

We can ask: 

• Who wrote this?
• Who received this?
• What kind of literature is this? A letter? Poetry? History?
• What point is the author making?
• What other Bible passages do we need to keep in mind?

When you find your treasures in the Bible, leave them there and let their beauty radiate.