Let’s talk about framing. Not framing as in home construction, but framing as in the way we perceive reality. Framing refers to how we see things. In particular, it refers to the fact that, as human beings, we don’t merely see things; we see things as. If you see a bear, you don’t just see a bear. You see the bear as dangerous. When you see a sunset, you don’t just see the sunset; you see the sunset as beautiful. That’s what I mean by framing. We see things as.

And not just sight, but our other senses as well. We hear the buzzing of a fly as annoying. We hear the laughter of a child as delightful. We smell the aroma of cookies as pleasant. We taste and see that honey is good. Framing, then, has to do with the immediate and snap judgments we make about reality and its relation to us.

Changing Lenses

Our framing is not static. The child’s laughter that is delightful at one moment is a nuisance when you’re trying to get work done. The laughter is the same; the framing — your snap judgment — is different.

“Framing has to do with the immediate and snap judgments that we make about reality and its relation to us.”

Let’s take another step. We’re always framing, and it’s good that we are. It’s what keeps us alive. Our snap judgments lead to snap reactions. The framing bear-as-dangerous is why you jump in the car and drive away when you see one. The speed of our snap judgments engages our snap reactions almost automatically. In fact, we might say that our snap judgments and snap reactions are not in our immediate control (though, as we’ll see, they are shaped over time by our choices and experiences).

As humans — with souls and bodies, hearts and minds, intellects and wills — our snap judgments are often incredibly complex. They don’t merely involve simple and straightforward judgments about dangerous bears and delightful laughter. Behind our framing lies a complex web of imagination, memory, narrative-framing, embodied experience, and our present expectations, desires, and fears. In short, because we are human, why we see things as we do is a complicated question.

More than simply being human, our fallibility and sinfulness complicate our framing. Because we are fallible, our framing can be mistaken. We might mistake a garden hose for a snake and unnecessarily panic. And because we are sinful, our snap reactions following our snap judgments are not always good. Your spouse makes an observation; you make a snap judgment — comment-as-insult — and you react with your own insulting comment, and the situation escalates. You see the two places you could go wrong: Was your snap judgment correct? And was your snap reaction appropriate?

Our Chosen Stories

We can think of many other examples. Was that question from your coworker simply a request for information? Or was it a subtle shot at your ignorance? Your friends go out one night and don’t invite you. Did they simply forget or intentionally leave you out? Snap judgment, snap reaction.

And now we can see how our framing — and the snap reactions that flow from it — sets us on a path.

They didn’t invite me. They intentionally left me out. They don’t want to be around me. They’ve rejected me as their friend. I’ll show them.

With every judgment, we add a corresponding reaction, which together make the frame sturdier. Our experience and our choices, our memories and our imaginations, the stories we tell ourselves and the things that happen to us — all of these work together to shape and reshape our framing.

Notice How You Frame

What then should we do?

First, we ought to be curious about our own framing. I reacted because I made a snap judgment. Why did I make that judgment? And was that an appropriate reaction? Growing in self-awareness is crucial if we are to frame the world rightly. Our reactions are tied to our framing, and both often reveal subtle assumptions that we may not even be fully aware of.
C.S. Lewis describes just this sort of dynamic in The Screwtape Letters.

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. (111)

Note the snap reactions: anger and ill-temper. Note that what produces them is a snap judgment: misfortune conceived as injury. That’s the framing: hardship as violation of a claim. What assumption is revealed by this snap judgment and snap reaction? Screwtape continues.

Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend), that throw him out of gear.

Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption “My time is my own.” (111–12)

There is the assumption, the pattern, beneath the snap judgment — “My time is my own.” Curiosity about our reaction leads us to awareness of our judgment and the revealing of our (false) assumption. Thus, reframing our view of our time becomes essential in shaping us in a more humble and godly way.

Notice How Others Frame

Second, be curious about the framing of others. My spouse or child or friend reacted strongly because they made a snap judgment about me. Why did they do so? Does their snap judgment fit a real pattern I display? And rather than escalating the situation with my own snap reaction, how can I love them through it?

Again, Lewis describes how important such self-reflection is in our closest relationships. Listen to Screwtape’s strategy for provoking our snap judgments and snap reactions in our domestic lives.

When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother’s eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it.

Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy — if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this is easily managed. (13)

Again, note the way that our reactions and judgments reveal improbable assumptions. Our awareness of such facts allows us to be curious and compassionate toward our family and friends and, Lord willing, love them more wisely.

Be Transformed by Scripture

Third, mind the patterns that shape your framing. Paul says it clearly in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world.” In other words, don’t frame reality the way that the world frames reality. Its pattern is not to be our pattern. Instead, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” This is why we read the Scriptures and seek God in prayer and worship with God’s people — so that our minds can be renewed and we frame reality the way God does.

“Don’t frame reality the way that the world frames reality.”

Finally, marvel at the amazing reframing that God has worked in us in our view of Christ. At one time, our frame was darkened and blind. We saw Christ as a stumbling block and foolishness. Christ-as-ugly, Christ-as-dull, Christ-as-trivial — that was our frame.

But then, the God who said “Let light shine out of darkness” shone in our hearts (2 Corinthians 4:6). He called us from darkness to light and reframed Jesus for us. Now we see Christ as the power of God and the wisdom of God. Through the miracle of the new birth, we see Jesus differently. Christ-as-glorious. Jesus-as-worthy. This is the frame of frames, the pattern that transforms us from one degree of glory to another.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14735917/was-the-old-testament-in-light-of-the-new

If the CROSS conference had existed twenty years ago, when I was a college student, I would have been here. So it feels relatively easy to put myself in your shoes. I’ve asked myself, What was it that I needed to hear as a young adult about how to meet God each day?

If it were just one thing, I think it would be this: gather a day’s portion. You might call it “faithful realism” in daily Bible intake. In short, not trying to do too much. Not trying to acquire a lifetime’s worth of Bible knowledge in a few short months, or weeks! (And not falling off the wagon and doing nothing when you get discouraged.) Rather, adopting a modest, realistic approach in seeking to meet with God, in his word, and seeking to be faithful over time. And coming to God, through his word, to be fed, to be nourished — to receive, not achieve.

So, gather a day’s portion. I’ll flesh out this vision in five brief aspects, but first let me set the scene for where the phrase “gather a day’s portion” comes from in Exodus 16.

Bread from Heaven

In Exodus 14, God’s people have just been freed from slavery in Egypt and passed through the Red Sea. Moses and the people erupt in a song of praise in the first half of chapter 15 (vv. 1–21), but in barely three days, the people already are grumbling (Exodus 15:22–24). God responds with grace — he “heals” the bitter water, and brings them to a place of plenty, an oasis with “twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees” (Exodus 15:27).

Once they set out from the oasis, soon they are grumbling again (Exodus 16:2), now to the point of delusion (Exodus 16:3). Again, God responds with grace. He says in Exodus 16:4, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day.”

This bread from heaven they call “manna,” and Moses gives the further instruction in verse Exodus 16:16, “Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat.”

Gathering Every Day

Now, Exodus 16 is not first and foremost about Christian Bible reading today and how to meet God each day. But it does give us a glimpse into who our God is, and what it means to have him as our God and for us to be his people. He is the kind of God who provides for our needs on an everyday basis. He is the God who is with his people every step of the way, to give us, by his own hand, daily provision in the wilderness — any place in the world — to get us safely to his promised land. And he loves to feed his people a day at a time.

“God loves to feed his people a day at a time.”

Jesus taught us to pray to our Father, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11), and he warns us not to adopt the build-bigger-barns mindset of the rich fool, who put his hope for the future in his own store rather than in the Father’s daily, active care (Luke 12:13–21).

God wants our sitting down with his Book, to meet with him each day, to be more like coming to dinner than going to the grocery store. Come to eat and drink, here and now, for today, not mainly to store up for someday in the future. God doesn’t mean for us to focus on developing our own stash and personal pantry, but to feed straight from his warehouse.

So, coming to God’s word to gather a day’s portion has come to have at least these five brief aspects for me.

Plan

First is a plan, which includes time and place. It was no accident that Jesus rose early, and the united testimony of centuries of faithful saints has been that the quiet of first thing in the morning is far and away the best time for far and away the most Christians. One way I think about it is that I want God’s voice, in his word, to be the first voice I hear each day. Most will find out over time that it is worth it to get off your screen the night before, and get to bed on time, and get up early — before all the people who stayed up too late on their screens — and meet with the living God, in his word, in those quietest and least-distracting moments of the day.

Plan also includes place, which I mean in two senses: in the world and in the word. In the world means the physical location in which you’ll open your Bible. For me, I want an uncluttered desk or table. In the word means a planned place in the Bible to open to. I would not recommend opening at random, or just bouncing around each day with whatever feels interesting on the spur of the moment. This is where a reading plan can help for balance in the long term and clarity about where to go today. Find a time-tested reading plan, and take each day’s assigned readings as God’s gift to you that morning for his feeding of your soul.

Pace

Second is pace. This is so important. I suspect so many seasons of Bible reading are ruined by rushing and impatience. Modern life can be so hurried. There are so many options and still just 24 hours in the day. So, we hurry. We hurry through meals. Hurry on the roads. Hurry to scroll through our feeds. Hurry when we read articles and books, often just skimming, because we feel like we’re always running out of time. But hurry ruins Bible reading. I think it hampers most reading, but Bible reading all the more.

In a life of hurry, let your daily season in God’s word be your first stance against the tides. Slow down when you open the Bible. Find the pace that accords with nourishing your soul for the day. God’s word is not fast food. For me, this means I need enough time to lose track of time. I need to find the pace that frees me to follow rabbit trails and check cross-references that come into my own head, or check the ones in the margin — that I have space to try to understand Scripture in the world of Scripture. What previous and later scriptures sound like this one, or use the same categories and language and terms and images?

Pause

Third is pause. What I want to highlight here is the importance of meditation. Not just reading. As you read, and slowly, find some place to pause, to linger and ponder some striking truth, some unexpected ray of God’s goodness, some glimpse of his beauty.

In meditation, you pause and ponder some truth, roll it around on the tongue of your soul, seeking to not only understand it but enjoy it, or feel the weight of it. Which leads, then, to addressing God (in prayer) as his word has addressed us and gone deep in us in meditation.

Prayer

So, fourth is prayer. Meditation is a bridge between Bible reading and prayer. Instead of doing your Bible readings over here, and then pivoting to prayer lists over here, let your Bible reading lead to meditation, and meditation then lead to prayer.

Here’s my little arc for what I’m seeking to do each morning with my Bible open:

Begin with Bible.
Move to meditation.
Polish with prayer.

To meet with God is not only to hear his words in the Bible, but also to speak back to him, in response to his word, in prayer. It’s a relationship. First, God speaks in his word, and we listen deeply and take it all the way in through meditation. Then, amazingly, God wants to hear back from us. In Christ, we have his ear. He means for us now, in light of what he says in his word, to address him in praise, thanks, confession, and supplication.

Person

Fifth and finally is the person, whose name is Jesus. Meeting with God, in his word, is no mere activity. It’s not mainly an exercise in learning. It is meeting with a person, who is not only God but also man like us. To see Jesus — by the Spirit, through the word — is to see the Father. To know him is to know God. To enjoy him is to enjoy God. To feed your soul on him is to have true life.

“Our most pressing need is not to master the Bible but to be mastered by God in Christ, through his word.”

Bible reading and meditation and prayer are means to an end. They are God’s means of grace to the great end of knowing and enjoying Jesus as the Pearl of Great Price (Matthew 13:45–46), as the great Treasure hidden in a field and found in joy (Matthew 13:44), as the Surpassing Value worth counting all as loss to have (Philippians 3:8).

So, gather a day’s portion is my reminder not to try to do too much in morning devotions, and not to miss the main thing. Our most pressing need is not to master the Bible but to be mastered by God in Christ, through his word, in a day’s portion, for a lifetime.