My father called it the “dot painting.” The proper name in English is “A Sunday Afternoon in the Island of La Grande Jattee” by Georges Seurat.

Both names tell you something about the painting. Dad was intrigued because close up you could see that the entire painting consisted of very small dabs of paint. There are no lines or areas of a single color. When you back up (and you really have to back up because the painting is almost 7′ by 10′), there is a scene of people enjoying themselves on an island in the midst of the river Seine.

In a way, looking at this painting is metaphor for reading Scripture. We can look very closely at a small part of the Bible or we can examine of a whole section of the Bible. Both approaches are helpful, but the close up method always needs the context of the broader scope.

Frequently we approach the Bible through isolated verses. This is problematic since the Bible wasn’t written in verses. Reading single verses without the larger context can be misleading. The mother of a friend often quoted John 11:35 (“Jesus wept”) when her son related some predicament he had gotten into. But the words are really about Jesus emotional reaction to the death of his friend Lazarus.

We have to back up and see the whole context of a part of Scripture to understand it. Pastor Art does this so well in his sermons. To understand the Bible we need the big picture.

Read Matthew 13:1-23 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Posted by Wayne in July 2018