Do you remember those hidden eye posters that were so popular a few years ago? You know those posters that you would look at and see so many beautiful colors but there was no real picture that you could make out. As you got closer and re-adjusted your eyes a hidden picture of an airplane or the statue of liberty would suddenly jump out at you.
When those posters first came out I couldn’t get the hang of it. I knew that I was supposed to see something in the poster but no matter how hard I tried all that I could see was a bunch of random colors. My sister would say, “Try crossing your eyes!” “Come at it at an angle!” No matter what I did. Nothing! One day everything came clear, I could look beyond the foreground and I caught a glimpse of something beneath. Voila, there it was the Starship Enterprise flying past the Moon of Vulcan.
When I was in the sixth grade we had a reading marathon. Each of the kids in my class would sign people up to sponsor them for the amount of books that they would read during the contest. While I was signing people up, one of the men that I talked to said that he would donate five dollars if I read the Bible. We settled for the five dollars if I just read the New Testament.
When it was time to collect the donations I went back to the man to pick up the five dollars. I had read the whole New Testament and wanted to collect my prize for that huge labor. When I reached his door he asked me two questions. With a squint in his eye he asked skeptically, did you read the whole New Testament? Yes I said, “The whole thing.” Well, he reflected,” did you understand it?” Not really knowing where he was going with the question I replied, “Sure.” Almost at once he asked, “No, did you understand the underlying meaning of what you read.” Not as sure as I was the first time he asked I replied, “I guess so.”
It wasn’t until years late that I would understand what he was driving at. Over the years I had read parts of the New Testament several times. Each time I read it, all that I got out of it was nice stories and ethical points. I concluded that the Bible was just a nice book that could help us to get along with other people.
After my conversion, after I had come to Christ, I started reading the Bible in earnest. I started looking at the Bible in a new way, a way that I had not looked at it before. Slowly I started to see an underlining meaning to the things that I was reading, the meaning that God had meant for us to see and had given us the Holy Spirit so that we could see. Slowly, the picture became clear. Slowly I got a glimpse of God’s word...
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