Another fun strategy for Bible reading

This post is like that other post but has a different kind of thing to look for in readings of Bible verses and stories, which has to do with just practical truth that comes to light in stories that seem and really are about other topics.  I don’t know how incidental some of the information would be, but I think that God and Jesus consciously and deliberately provided helpful and basic knowledge about survival and wise living all throughout stories and descriptions that seemed like they were about other spiritual topics.  One example I have noticed before is in the series of stories Jesus tells about someone looking for a coin, someone looking for a lost sheep, and the story about the lost son. The order of those stories becomes an illustration of what should be prioritized and valued, with money being the least and human life being generally the most important.  That is not the main point of the stories, but it is there in the context.  Another example that comes to mind seems so stupid but is contained within Jesus’s sermon on the mount when he tells people they are the light of the world and the salt of the earth.  I really think that as great as those statements are, and truly some of the happiest verses, it could also just be a reminder to use actual salt for various purposes. It could literally be an advertisement for salt, in case individuals or whole cultures have not thought to make use of that cooking resource.  That sounds stupid, but that is exactly what I am saying about the practical knowledge in otherwise shocking or important stories. One more extreme example might have to do with the time that Jesus was doing some stuff and told his disciples about the location of a donkey that they could untie and use. It might have been for palm Sunday. I think that even though it was an example of Jesus’s special supernatural life that was unfolding in a certain unprecedented and unrepeatable way, he was also revealing how some spiritual gifts can work, much like another time when he told Peter or someone else that they could find a fish with a coin in its mouth from another location. Jesus could see stuff, and even though it was because he was the son of God, I think that people who want to do those kinds of things can learn how, and Jesus was making it known that people can see stuff in other locations if they have certain abilities given to them by God, or acquired through some kind of obedience or work of the Holy Spirit. I decided to go ahead and use an example that seems kind of unbelievable in addition to Jesus just saying “please pass the salt.” But the main thing I am saying is that the amount of that helpful and seemingly incidental knowledge in the Bible is amazing and can be very fun to read about and focus on sometimes instead of the more obvious purposes of stories and facts.