'The Bible is a picture book in many ways. No, God didn't include drawings or photographs for you, but the language of the Bible is wonderfully visual and graphic. Again and again, God reaches into the physical world and paints a familiar image to help us grasp the less familiar realities of the spiritual world. Bread, the sun, a rock, a river, a judge, a flower, a lion, and more all become visual tools for understanding God and his kingdom. It is not an accident that the physical world pictures the spiritual world so well. This was part of God's intention. He embedded rich metaphors all over the universe he made, knowing full well that he would employ them to help us understand the spiritual realities we must grasp in order to live life his way.
The more I study Scripture, the more I appreciate this qulaity of vibrant physicality. Word pictures splash across page after page, reminding us how much God cares for us. From the seed in the ground, to the cross to be carried, to the weed, to the treasure in the field, God wants to draw from his storehouse of physical examples to help us know him, ourselves and our world more accurately. This means that, in simply looking out my window, I can be reminded of precious truths that God has connected to the physical world I am viewing.'
Paul David Tripp, Broken-Down House: Living Productively in a World Gone Bad, p.9.
