In the fall of 1974, my parents became homeowners. They, my four siblings and I were ecstatic to be moving into our new house and out of the one we had rented for seven years from my paternal grandparents that was situated behind their house and was accessed by a quarter-mile-long car path. Our new house included five acres of land on Hobbs Road. Five acres isn’t enough land to sustain a family-of-seven farm operation, which was the means of our livelihood. So, my dad began leasing farms on Hobbs Road.
I remember riding in the pickup up and down Hobbs Road for the first several weeks of living in our new house. We were becoming more and more familiar with our new road. We saw our neighbors, the other Hobbs Road residents, the patches of woods, the open fields – some large, some small – and the turns, rises and falls of the country road. With each passing back and forth from the end of the road to our house, we became a little bit more familiar with Hobbs Road.
Soon my dad had leased three different farms on Hobbs Road, all totaling about two-hundred acres. Up until 1980, when my dad bought a three-hundred-acre farm of his own, we tended those three farms and added a few more, making our total operation about five-hundred acres.
These farms were owned by widows of farmers who had passed away after a life of farming their land, except for a couple of them who had retired.
Over the years, as we tended these farms, going several times each week to the farms and working long days in the various fields up and down our road, we all gained greater detail in our perspective on Hobbs Road. Whereas we had initially driven the road at fifty miles per hour, we were now spending full days and weeks in one plot along the road. Our perspective of Hobbs Road included multiple vantage points as well as an overview of the span of the road since we still drove the speed limit to and from its end once or twice a day.
Because of these experiences, I got to know Hobbs Road in almost every way imaginable. I knew every ditch, field and building; and because I used to jog to the end of the road and back several times weekly (a total of 3.5 miles), I learned every part of the road’s surface as well as every portion of the shoulder of the entire road and every dog at every house. (All dogs in that culture were outside and not confined, since they played the primary role in each home’s security system.)
There weren’t very many things, big or small, about Hobbs Road that I didn’t know.
Learning the Bible can be an intimidating prospect. It’s such a big book and can be difficult to understand, especially when we first start reading it. For that very reason, it was fourteen years after I became a Christian when I finally decided to read through the whole Bible.
Reading through the Bible gave me an overall understanding, but it was a seminar I attended called Walk thru the Old Testament that really helped me build the framework for understanding the Bible. You can see – and participate in – a sample of WTOT with this link.
Around that framework I’ve been able, over the years, to fill in the detailed perspective that I gained in my time of studying short passages of Scripture. In seminary and other programs of study I’ve been able to organize Biblical information and doctrine around various topics. But my most helpful study has been seeking out answers to my points of curiosity, just in my personal devotional study time. Of course, listening to and reading great teachers have also helped me immensely.
All these approaches to studying the Bible (overview, organization, topical study, specific passage study) remind me of getting to know Hobbs Rd. (driving fast, driving slow, running, walking, working, exploring). I can’t say I know the Bible as well as I once knew Hobbs Road, but I’m working on it.
And I have 3 suggestions for those hungry for Biblical knowledge:
- Get started. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The Bible is every bit the humongous beast the elephant is. Start eating today.
- Delve into every part of the Bible and try to organize it in your head as you go. Three blind men each encountered an elephant. One felt the trunk and thought an elephant must be like a snake; another felt the leg and assumed an elephant to be as a tree; the third man felt his belly and thought an elephant must be like a wall. Once they all compared their experiences, they understood the elephant better.
- Mix up your study. On an African safari, a man found himself amid a herd of elephants; demanding his driver take him out from the herd and to the top of a nearby hill, he stopped, turned, studied the elephants a few moments and said, “Ok, drive me back into the herd.” After repeating the routine of in-the-midst and on-the-hill several times, the man went home having thoroughly experienced the herd of elephants.
Elephants are magnificent creatures. And Hobbs Road has a special place in my heart. But studying and knowing God’s Word is one of the most important endeavors in all of life. May God bless you to grow in your understanding of His powerful Word!
