Treasure in the Details

One of my all-time favorite books is The Gospel according to Luke, the fourth book in the New Testament. I think this book has taken on great meaning for me because the author seems to be making a serious study about what Jesus has to say and do, even down to the hows and whys of what Jesus says and does.

Luke writes of his thorough-going intent in the well-known introduction (1:1-4) he addresses to Theophilus. Luke will be concerned down to the very details so that there will be no question regarding what he has written. He was a doctor from what we know, and doctors, after all, notice details. Luke himself says you can count on him for this care for the fine points. His writings are trustworthy. I like the care Luke takes with the details in his story of Jesus’ life and work.

Doctors are also trained to discern which details are significant. You can study something down to the minutest of minutiae, but if you don’t know the value of what you are studying, you waste precious time and resources – and you make big mistakes.

I have a doctor friend. He’s my therapist actually. We talk over a lot of things and I’ve noted that some things I think he will think are very important he finds not all that significant and some things I think he will not think are very important he takes special notice of. I’ve learned to trust his sense in these matters. What he sees as valuable information or impressions generally turn out to be just that.

That too is what I like about Luke. He has a good sense about what is valuable to us his readers. John says in his Gospel that the world couldn’t contain all the books recording the details related to Jesus’ life and ministry. All four of the Gospel writers had to make choices. There was information they put in and information they left out. Were the other things Jesus did not important? Well, they were very important, but not what needed to be in these Gospels.

There is one more thing I like about Luke’s writings. As I’ve said, both Luke and my doctor make calculated decisions, based on their training, about what is important as far as facts and feeling are concerned. Luke, like my doctor, is not interested in the information just for the information’s sake. With my therapist, whatever is important to me is important to him. I am important to him, not just as a client, but as a person that he has come to know and care for.

Luke cares deeply about his subject and his readers. His subject is Jesus. Is this ever obvious! Jesus is the center of everything Luke is writing. But Luke also cares about his audience and he wants that audience to know how important Jesus is – and what is valuable about him for them. Jesus, Luke knows, is ever so vital to us, the readers. And this, above all else, makes Luke worth reading.

So, what can we do with this information? We can decide that we are going to take as much care to study what Luke has written as Luke has in writing it. Because it is of awesome significance to us.