The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures: He leads me beside the still waters
He restores my soul: He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His names sake
Psalm 23:1-3
This is such a familiar scripture for so many of us and yet because few of us have had any experience with actual shepherding we miss so many of the nuances of the passage. I’m reading a book by W. Phillip Keller called A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 and it is opening my eyes to the concept of contextual reading of the scriptures. When David wrote the 23rd Psalm the readers or hearers of his day would understand the correlations between them as followers of God and the sheep that so many of them had daily contact with. Jesus used common every day illustrations that were so very relevant to the people of His day but are somewhat lost on us today. If we don’t take time to delve deeper into the context of the day when it was spoken or written, we could miss out on some really enlightening lessons. Let me give you an example, what do you think people will think of in a few hundred years when they read about Twitter or texting or iPods or one of a zillion techo-terms that we use today in our language. They won’t know who Seinfeld is or what tailgating is so what kind of trouble would they have understanding what we were referring to in our books. I want to challenge you to dig a little deeper when you are reading the Bible, study it, go online, read what other students have come up with, you will probably begin to see the scriptures in a whole new light! -pc
He makes me to lie down in green pastures: He leads me beside the still waters
He restores my soul: He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His names sake
Psalm 23:1-3
This is such a familiar scripture for so many of us and yet because few of us have had any experience with actual shepherding we miss so many of the nuances of the passage. I’m reading a book by W. Phillip Keller called A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 and it is opening my eyes to the concept of contextual reading of the scriptures. When David wrote the 23rd Psalm the readers or hearers of his day would understand the correlations between them as followers of God and the sheep that so many of them had daily contact with. Jesus used common every day illustrations that were so very relevant to the people of His day but are somewhat lost on us today. If we don’t take time to delve deeper into the context of the day when it was spoken or written, we could miss out on some really enlightening lessons. Let me give you an example, what do you think people will think of in a few hundred years when they read about Twitter or texting or iPods or one of a zillion techo-terms that we use today in our language. They won’t know who Seinfeld is or what tailgating is so what kind of trouble would they have understanding what we were referring to in our books. I want to challenge you to dig a little deeper when you are reading the Bible, study it, go online, read what other students have come up with, you will probably begin to see the scriptures in a whole new light! -pc
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