How to Eat an Elephant

“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7 ESV)

I conduct a lot of Bible studies, and I inevitably get the question, “How did you get that out of this scripture?” Understanding the Bible is not easy. Sure, there are all kinds of modern translations, some of which completely obliterate the message written by the biblical author. So, how do we determine the focus of a section of scripture?

I like to look at scripture like a Jigsaw puzzle. When you build a 1000-piece Jigsaw puzzle, you cannot lay out the pieces, and by scanning them, see the picture on the cover. They are disjointed and haphazardly laid out on the table. The Bible makes it worse because there is no picture on the cover or in front of each chapter that we can match with the pieces.

To understand scripture, we essentially build the Jigsaw puzzle. With a puzzle, we pick one piece, usually a corner. We scan the details of the piece and notice the colors and designs. We see a green piece with black lines. We notice two sides have indentations, and two have protrusions. On the one protrusion, we see a black line separating the green. Now, we look at our other pieces and find the ones that have green with black stripes. We move them around, looking for the piece that is green with a black line in the center of its indentation. We find the one that fits our starting piece. Slowly, we match up the other similarly colored pieces until we see a black gate through which we see green grass—a gate to a portion of a stone building.  We place that where we see it can fit and then we begin to look for the pieces that match the stone building. Sometimes, we pick up on other matching pieces in our pool of pieces, which develop into a different segment of the picture. We build the segment and place it where we see it will go. We continue in this fashion until we have multiple segments of the picture that we can now fit together to complete the picture on the box.

This is how I read the Bible. I start with a small piece and try to absorb as many of the meanings and representations as I can. If I just looked at all the words, clauses, and phrases, it would make no sense. However, when we slowly start building the medium-sized segments of the chapter we are reading the meaning becomes clearer. As we develop these segments, we begin to understand where the author is leading us. We understand each smaller segment, and we can join them together to develop a clear understanding of the author's total message.

The reason many have difficulty understanding the Bible is because they try to read it as one whole long story. Understanding the Bible takes a lot of work and a lot of time. When I faced a large challenge, my grandfather would tell me, “You can’t eat a whole elephant in one sitting,” “You must do it slowly taking a lot of small bites.” This is true of the Bible. You must read small portions, meditate on them, dwell on them, and come to a clear understanding of them as you digest the writing. Then and only then do you move on to the next verse or chapter. I read the Bible all the time, and the slower I read, the greater my understanding becomes. I also purposely seek Jesus within each text, trying to understand how it points to Him.

Do not become frustrated when reading the Bible; rejoice in it. Read it slowly. Develop an understanding of each small segment you read, then move on to the next. You will see how each segment fits together, and as you assemble them, the message of the author, God, will be made clear to you.

Thrive on the word of God; his plan, His purpose, and His finished work are contained within.

Peace and Grace!