A Practical Walk

When we moved to West Africa, our first assignment was to learn French. After that we also worked on two other languages. We used a great culture and language acquisition (CLA) program . One of the illustrations it gave was that of an iceberg.

The first time you hear a word it goes onto your iceberg, but it’s still way under the water and can’t be seen on the surface. You can’t use the word yet, and in fact even if you heard it a second time, you might still not remember what it means.

But you hear the word again and again. After each exposure to the word it moves higher and higher up the iceberg, until one day you accurately use the word in a sentence! Now the word is at the top of the iceberg and out of the water!

I loved this illustration and have thought back to it many, many times, not just in language learning. When homeschooling my kids, I’ve had to remind myself that a new word or math formula might be on their iceberg, but not high enough for them to pull out of thin air.

For example, I know multiple math formulas. I might recognize them if I saw them, but to actually use them, I’d have to give myself a quick reminder. They’ve fallen below the water line on my iceberg.

The way to get things higher up on the iceberg is exposure, exposure, exposure! You have to hear the word, say the word, see the word, think about the word. The more you’re exposed, the quicker it’ll reach the top. This is exactly why kids who read profusely, tend to have higher vocabulary and spelling.

I’ve been thinking about how this applies to our knowledge of God. We can spend five minutes a day reading the Bible and 30 minutes a week listening to a sermon, and our knowledge will grow at a certain rate. But what if we spent 30 minutes a day reading the Bible, and listened to sermons and podcasts throughout the week, and had conversations with people about God’s Word on a regular basis. How much more quickly would our knowledge and understanding grow with that kind of exposure!

I know in my personal life the more I’m hearing teaching, having conversations and reading from the Word, the more things click and fit into place. Just like in language learning, my “knowledge of God” iceberg grows much more rapidly the more exposure I give myself.