To set context, The Navigators has a long-standing illustration called The Hand – five ways to make scripture part of your life:
The idea is that the more “fingers” you apply of hearing, reading, studying, memorizing with meditation, the stronger your “grip” on the Word. Let’s talk for a minute about “study.”
When I teach Bible study, the discipline of spending a lot of time on a relatively small section, I keep it simple and suggest:
- Observe: see what’s in the text
- Organize: put a simple outline on it
- Obey: find a way to apply it to your life
My friend and Navigator colleague Henry Clay just sent me his personal manual on studying the psalms, Then Sings My Soul. In the introduction, he included an essay I heard nearly 50 years ago but not since. It puts “observe” on steroids.
The essay is “The Student, The Fish, and Agassiz” by “The Student” – later revealed to be Entomologist Samuel H. Scudder (1837-1911). He wrote an account of his first learning encounter with the renowned ichthyologist Dr. Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), founder of Harvard University’s Lawrence School of Science. The story took place around 1859 and was first published (anonymously) in 1873. The essay is worth the read in its entirety, but here are a few highlights:
“Take this fish,” he said, “and look at it; we call it a Haemulon; by and by I will ask what you have seen.”…In ten minutes I had seen all that could be seen in that fish…My two hands, my two eyes, and the fish; it seemed a most limited field. I pushed my fingers down its throat to see how sharp its teeth were… At last a happy thought struck me—I would draw the fish; and now with surprise I began to discover new features in the creature…[But it wasn’t enough. The professor said,] “You have not looked very carefully; why,” he continued, more earnestly, “you haven’t seen one of the most conspicuous features of the animal, which is as plainly before your eyes as the fish itself. Look again; look again!” And he left me to my misery…[After thinking about it all night, ] “Do you perhaps mean,” I asked, “that the fish has symmetrical sides with paired organs?” His thoroughly pleased, “Of course, of course!” repaid the wakeful hours of the previous night. After he had discoursed most happily and enthusiastically—as he always did—upon the importance of this point, I ventured to ask what I should do next. “Oh, look at your fish!” he said, and left me again to my own devices. In a little more than an hour he returned and heard my new catalogue. “That is good, that is good!” he repeated, “but that is not all; go on.” And so for three long days, he placed that fish before my eyes, forbidding me to look at anything else, or to use any artificial aid. “Look, look, look,” was his repeated injunction.” – From The Student, The Fish, and Agassiz, emphases mine.
You can observe a lot by just watching. – Yogi Berra
1 My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you,
2 making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding;
3 yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding,
4 if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures,
5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. – Proverbs 2.1 – 5, ESV)