Are we so slow to understand?

On the surface, there is much that Jesus commands that seems impossible:  Love one another as I have loved you;  Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect; Look at the lilies of the field; they neither toil nor spin, yet not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these.....

Like the parables, these commands seem at first blush incomprehensible.  Paul's letter to the Corinthians, however, explains why:

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.....

No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.  We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us (1 Cor. 2:10 ff).

It is not enough to "study" the Bible, in terms of merely reading what it says.  The ancient Greek icons depict Jesus holding either a closed book or an open book in one hand, with the other hand raised in the position of a teacher.  Both images convey the same message---the book remains closed to us until Jesus illumines its meaning, as He did with the disciples when He told the parables.  Many who heard Jesus teach failed to understand what He was saying, but later, He explained the meaning privately to the disciples who asked. 

When we read Scripture, or listen to the teachings of Jesus, it is critical that we pray also, asking for wisdom and understanding.  Often, what the Spirit teaches is a great surprise to us, even though we thought we understood what we had read.  We must ask the Spirit to show us what to read as well as how to read it.  People often give up on Scripture because they are trying to read it as a book, not knowing that it is in reality a library, and that the Holy Spirit must guide us through it if we are to grow spiritually.  Only He knows what we need to read and understand at any given moment of our lives, so we need to allow Him to make the words real and alive to us at the time we need them. 

It is only when we learn to pray and learn to listen attentively that the Bible becomes a living document instead of a dusty tome.