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Think of the first time you took your regular commute. If it wasn’t already a familiar place, you may have arrived at your destination and not remembered the whole of your drive. Maybe a certain curve stuck out in your mind, a landmark or a sign. But the whole of the trip was not easily learned on your first excursion. As the days and months went by that stretch of road became a little less mysterious. The bold indicators that once attracted your eye began to fade with repetitiveness and more unassuming details took their place, whole sections of the road begin to fill in, anchored around those original markers. Eventually even the smooth flat road seeped into your mind. Unconsciously, bit by bit, it was their when you tried to recall it. So one day without perhaps even realizing it you knew the road like the proverbial “back of your hand.”

Understanding scripture comes about in much the same process as our repetitive drives to work. On the first reading of a particular book you may find a verse here and there resonating in your mind like an eye catching sign. But they hang in your mind isolated and alone with nothing easily remembered before or after them. Only after repeated reading do the gaps in your recollection begin to fill in. Eventually the coherence of a certain chapter begins to take shape as your recall more and more of the connections between its scenes and stories. Finally, as your grasp the authors intended outline, even the whole book will form a string of interrelated thoughts in your mind. Only then can you truly say that you have really read the book. And only then do you really begin to see.