It had been a while since I had done nighttime photography, but I had a new piece of equipment and wanted to try it out, so I set up my camera, started my time lapse, and went to bed. My camera ran for a couple hours before filling up the memory card. The next day, I was looking at the pictures and realizing that I didn't set it up correctly and the resulting timelapse would have jumps in brightness instead of a gradual transition to darkness. At first glance, there was nothing unusual about the 700 photos. I scanned through them, watching the sky get darker and the stars get brighter. At the end, I thought I caught part of the sunrise as the sky got a bit brighter again. I wasn't going to get the results I hoped for, but for the practice, I put together the whole time lapse and got the most amazing surprise.
What I thought was the beginning of a sunrise wasn’t a sunrise at all - it was a rare appearance of the Northern Lights dancing across the hilltops. There they were, right as my memory card reached capacity. The most amazing thing I had ever photographed was quietly hiding in the final frames of all those photos. I almost didn’t process the photos because I thought I’d seen all there was to see. Sometimes I’ve done that with Scripture.
At first glance, there may not seem to be anything unusual about a familiar passage of Scripture either. A casual read gives us a snapshot glance of what’s happening in the passage. It gives some context to help us get our bearings of what’s happening.
But, every time I read a passage, it's like taking a photo. Sometimes it feels repetitive, but each time through, the passage gets more familiar. Then suddenly, I notice a little something.
It might be a repeated word,
a command,
a promise,
a connection to another passage.
a command,
a promise,
a connection to another passage.
That’s the moment my reading becomes studying. On its own, each observation is just one small piece. Layered together, those observations reveal greater depth, a bigger picture, and sometimes an unexpected surprise. That's when passages I thought I already knew begin revealing treasures I hadn't noticed before. Nothing about the text is new. Those treasures were there every time I read the passage. It was the process of studying the passage that changed what I could see.
It's worth reading a familiar passage again with a specific purpose, to find these little treasures.
The Northern Lights weren't obvious in a single photograph. It took hundreds of images viewed together before I recognized what had been there all along. Studying Scripture often feels the same way. That's why I keep coming back to familiar passages. I want to find what I haven’t recognized yet, because I’m still learning to see.
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