While reading God's Word this morning, powerful nuggets of truth, hope and inspiration were continuously popping out at me. This isn't an uncommon occurrence whenever I read my bible or daily devotionals, but today it invoked a memory. As I reached for my highlighters and began marking these points, I was reminded of law school.
One of the difficult things about law school is the amount of required reading and figuring out how to decipher and retain the important parts of the archaic material. Much like reading the bible, you can quickly find yourself lost in the weeds and just glossing over the words without actually understanding them. I recall re-reading single sentences from the legal text multiple times and still being unsure of what I just read.
In an attempt to overcome this challenge, I would use highlighters to help me navigate the information via color coordination. It soothed my type A personality and complimented my visual learning brain. It worked beautifully at first, but then as the days became longer, the reading assignments increased, the material became more dense and I was barely sleeping, my system started failing.
I was no longer beautifully highlighting and understanding the important parts of the text--the nuggets--but literally highlighting everything. Much like maneuvering through life, I was so bogged down by the workload and fast pace of law school that my comprehension was fading and I was losing sight of what was important.
God's Word is full of information designed to help us navigate through life, but it definitely cannot be glossed over if we hope to optimize our comprehension. It requires re-reading single sentences multiple times to understand God's heart. It requires grappling with the archaic material to understand His truth. It requires slowing down and being present in His presence.
If we run through life and allow the days to get longer, our workload to increase, our stress to become more dense and not rest in Him, our systems will surely fail. If we start highlighting everything in our lives as though they're equally important, we will miss the nuggets--the truth.
Law school is designed to train the brain to think analytically, among other things, and the more you scrape away through the process, the easier it becomes. Next thing you know, you've formed a habit and the system begins functioning properly.
This reminds me of a quote I love by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
“Sow a thought and you reap an action;
sow an act and you reap a habit;
sow a habit and you reap a character;
sow a character and you reap a destiny.”
Similarly, the more time we spend with God's Word, the easier it becomes to navigate the pages and ultimately, navigate life. By continuously reading to understand, we form the necessary habit of sitting still in His presence while soaking up His truth. In turn, we slowly transform into His image of us towards our destiny.
I encourage you all to open your bibles, get out your favorite highlighters and start creating a system that incorporates spending time with God daily.
May we all learn to decipher and retain the nuggets of God's Word--that which is important to navigating life and fulfilling our Kingdom purpose.
Love & Sunblock