Context

If you spend anytime around my husband, Britton, you will notice something pretty quickly; he is a drummer. There are always beats playing through his mind that he spills out to those around him through the tapping of his fingers or a beat-box bouncing off his lips. In fact, just the other night, Britton was holding Judah, our 6-month-old son, and started flinging Judah’s stubby arms around like he was an odd-shaped pair of drumsticks. Judah enjoyed it.

Britton is a musician at heart, it comes naturally to him and he sees music in everything he’s doing.

This was especially true a few months ago when Brit was helping James Cha and some of the other church men work on the dry-wall of the children’s area at church.  As the fine white powder clung to their hair and shirts from the hours of constant sanding of the drywall. James Cha said, “We need a banjo.” To which Britton replied, “Yeah, that would be awesome!” and then he played out a few lines of banjo music on his tongue with an expert twang that an actual banjo would have. Though I wasn’t there, I can imagine the strange looks pointed Brit’s direction when someone responded, “No, he means a wall banjo.”

Context, context, context.

Context-

  1. The parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect: You have misinterpreted my remark because you took it out of context.
  2. The set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.

When Britton told me that story I could hardly contain my laughter. It perfectly demonstrates how important context is in any situation. Through my personal growth as a Christian, I have been through many tense moments in my personal Bible study in my attempts to understand the truth in God’s word. Most of the times my struggle with scripture was based on my lack of understanding of the context. In fact, I have listened to many teachers who carelessly took scripture and molded it to fit their message in a way that compromised the scripture’s actual meaning.

With this, I say that we should be a people like the Bereans written about in Acts 17 who were described as a people of noble character. “…they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so,” (Acts 17:11b ESV). As we read God’s word on a daily basis, we should do it with eagerness. As we listen to teachings of others, we should be examining the text to grasp the concepts as the Bible teaches. In this way, we can become students of God’s word, and I am confident that God will bless us through that knowledge as we gain a deeper understanding of our Creator.

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