When we come to the Bible, we may think of ourselves as looking at a long lake. It is one body of water, not bucketfuls lifted out here and there. I have learned to look on God’s word as that long lake, a body of water slowly moving along as it is fed from water upstream, a river flowing into it. That river is made up of truths flowing from the Almighty God.
At a certain point, the lake suddenly widens into an even larger body of water. That is where the New Testament begins, where God Himself comes personally on the scene in His Son, Jesus Christ. That wider lake is so dominant as a part of the whole that it causes me to view the beginning part (the Old Testament) in the light of the wider lake. Then I learned to think of that “scripture lake” in one other way: I would not only view it from above in seeking the truths it as a whole conveyed, I would also imagine myself being immersed in it — saturating my very being in it, to make the “Bible lake” more and more a part of my life.
And I think of my Bible in this way as having one other feature: the water flows out in many rivulets. They go out over a wide area. These streams are the truths which God gives us through His word, and they are truths that cover all of life and living on this earth. They not only apply to one’s personal life and to the church in how it is to be organized and carry on its work; there are such truths coming out of that “lake of scripture” that apply to everything humankind does on this earth — the way it organizes and runs its families, its schooling, its civil governments, its economy, its working life, and so on. God’s scriptures have specifics or clearly derived principles for all manner of life on this planet.
Robert M. Metcalf
