"Wonderful" Layers

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Proverbs 2:1–5 My son, if you receive my words, and treasure my commands within you, so that you incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding; yes, if you cry out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.

What it is speaking to me:

Humans learn in layers. Each additional layer of learning we grasp about a subject or thing we love deepens our appreciation of it.

I love movies. One of the movies I love is Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. And I have learned to love that movie more in layers as I have learned more about it. As a kid, it's a movie about a crabby guy who is unhappy, and God sends an angel to have him experience a world in which he never existed, and thus learn to be grateful for his "wonderful" life.

Then you grow up and understand the movie differently as an adult, appreciating the more nuanced themes in the film and maybe even identifying with George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart's character), or maybe Mary, or Potter (I hope not!). And I appreciate another layer of the film.

I am an amateur videographer and photographer, so I begin to look at how Capra as a director used light and composition in the telling of this story. And I appreciate a whole other layer of the film.

And then I go full nerd and start reading stories from the film set, and things that happened during the making of the movie. Like, for example (at least according to the internet), during the bar prayer scene, Jimmy Stewart broke down in completely unscripted, genuine tears.

George Bailey, at the lowest point of his life, quietly prays: "Dear Father in heaven, I'm not a praying man, but if you're up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I'm at the end of my rope. Show me the way." The script called for Stewart to deliver the lines — the crying was never planned. In a 1987 interview, Stewart recalled: "As I said those words, I felt the loneliness, the hopelessness of people who had nowhere to turn, and my eyes filled with tears. I broke down sobbing. This was not planned at all, but the power of that prayer, the realization that our Father in heaven is there to help the hopeless, had reduced me to tears."

What I didn't know was that the film was Stewart's first role after returning from active combat duty in WWII, and perhaps those tears were partially inspired by his experiences overseas.

To finish this nerd-out, you can actually tell that this story is true when you watch the movie, if you pay attention. Director Frank Capra had been filming a wide, long shot when it happened, so he didn't have a close-up of Stewart's face. Knowing he could never recapture that genuine emotion in a second take, Capra spent the following week in the film laboratory painstakingly enlarging individual frames of the wide shot to simulate a close-up, a technique virtually unprecedented at the time. This is why that particular shot appears noticeably grainier than the rest of the film. And now I appreciate that film even more with that additional layer.

Now, I write all this about this movie, which is super interesting to me (and hopefully at least a bit to you!), but it completely PALES compared to the richness of the layers in God's Word. The greatest treasures in Scripture sit right at the surface in one sense. At the first layer, you can read the words and they are all right there — it is like the kid seeing that movie for the first time. But in another sense, you have to dig out those same words, those same verses, over and over to get the best riches out of them, adding layer upon layer of understanding and knowledge as you go. And unlike a movie that you can eventually plumb the depths of, there is no end to the riches found in the Word of God. Christians have been mining the Word for thousands of years now, and they have never found bottom. The rich silver veins of truth have never run out. You can add endless layers of understanding to the Word and still find something new tomorrow.

So start digging.

What is it saying to you?

• How do you seek understanding in the Word?

• How do you start digging?

• Where have you found your richest treasure in the Word?

  
  

What are we going to do about it?

Pick a verse or set of verses that have been on your heart lately, and add a layer of understanding to them today. Read them, read about them, study them, even if it's just for a little bit of time, and ask God to show you something new about them.