I’m exploring observations Walter Isaacson has made about Leonardo da Vinci’s creativity. I’m applying them to Christian discipleship. I want to apply four of them to the specific task of Bible study.
Isaacson suggests we interact with the world around us by:
1) Retaining a childlike sense of wonder
2) Observing
3) Starting with the details
4) Seeing things unseen.
He illustrates these ideas in a wide variety of ways – asking why the sky is blue, noting that four-winged dragonflies’ wings move at varying speeds, slowing down while reading to consider each individual word, and imagining angels when looking at birds. I like all these ideas but want to push them farther and for a greater purpose. What would it look like to apply such intellectual curiosity to the reading of God’s word? I think I can illustrate all four ideas with just one example.
We might bring a childlike sense of wonder, make observations, note specific details, and see things unseen by reflecting on Psalm 8, verse 3, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place…”
We begin by observing the vocabulary choice of “fingers.” We start with the details given as examples of such work – the moon and the stars. And we see things unseen by wondering, “Why didn’t the Psalmist use the word “hand” to talk of how God accomplishes great things, as the scriptures do in many other places? (See Psalm 98:1 or Exodus 15:6, for example).
What does the image of fingers portray that a hand does not? Stop and look at your own fingers, as a child might. Have you ever seen a young child “discover” his or her fingers? It’s a beautiful sight to behold. If a baby could talk, she might say, “What are these funny things on the end of my – what is that, a hand? They’re different sizes and shapes. Why? Is this big one, what they call my thumb, supposed to do something different than this little one, what they call my pinky?”
Does this seem silly? I hope not. The fact that Psalm 8 tells me that God fashioned the heavens, the moon, and the stars with his fingers, I get a sense of careful crafting, deliberateness, and attention to the minutest detail. If he so delicately crafted the billions of stars that way, doesn’t that instill a greater sense of childlike wonder that he made me with even greater care? (The creation of the stars gets an amazingly small amount of airtime in Genesis 1 compared to the lengthy description of God’s creation of people). I might never look at my own fingers the same way, now that I’ve spent a few moments reflecting on how God made the heavens with his fingers.
In some ways, this is merely the practice of Biblical meditation. But I resist using the word “merely” to address the discipline of meditation because it is so important and it is practiced by so few. We shouldn’t need da Vinci or Isaacson to impress us with the importance of meditation. Psalm 1 does a better job of that. But my reading of the da Vinci biography has renewed my commitment to apply Psalm 1 to my daily life. My hope is that this blog will do something similar for you.
