Insight Doesn’t Come Pre-Cut
You have to unfold the scroll, rub in the mud, and stay long enough to see the light rise.
I heard it while walking.
The kind of sentence that lands with a soft thud in your chest and just… stays there.
"We are kept from our goals not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal." — Robert Brault
At first, I just nodded like, “Mmm, that’s good.”
But then it started rattling the cage a little.
So I did what I do when something won’t leave me alone—I turned it over, idea shepherd style.
What if that’s true not just of goals… but insight?
What if we aren’t kept from insight because we lack information…
But because we don’t know how to stay with it long enough to see the light break through?
We live in an age of tap-and-swipe revelation.
But insight doesn’t usually come packaged in bullet points or delivered through a headline.
It’s more like a sealed letter. You have to unfold it. Sit with it. Let it breathe. Let it breathe on you.
For me, unfolding often looks like this:
I’ll be reading Scripture, and a word hits me sideways. Not a big theological word, just something simple like “light” or “peace” or “remain.” But I can’t keep reading. I have to know more. What does it really mean? What does it look like when it walks around in my life?
So I dig.
Look up the original Greek or Hebrew.
Re-read the sentence with the deeper meaning in mind.
And suddenly, the sentence becomes a window, not just a wall of words.
It reminds me of the blind man in John 9.
Jesus didn’t just heal him with a word.
He knelt. Spit. Made mud. Rubbed it on the man’s eyes. Then told him to wash.
It was slow. Messy.
But when he came back, he didn’t just have facts—he had sight.
A new way of seeing the world. A new way of seeing God.
Unfolding does that.
So yeah, we have access. That’s not our problem.
We’re drowning in access.
But insight requires assimilation.
Not just input—but digestion.
Not just contact—but communion.
And that’s the role of the shepherd: not to collect every idea—but to linger with the right ones.
To slow down.
To unfold.
To see.
A Shepherd’s Pause
Pick one sentence that stirred something in you this week—maybe a line from Scripture, a quote from a podcast, or even a phrase from a conversation that made you tilt your head.
Option 1: Parse It
Circle one word. Look it up in the original language or a good dictionary.
Then re-read the sentence with that deeper meaning. What changed? What shifted in you?
Option 2: Cross Fields
Take a quote from one field (business, art, science, sports) and apply it to another (faith, parenting, creativity, etc.).
What happens when you drop that seed into different soil?
Does it still grow? Does it grow differently?
Want more ways to unfold insight from what you’re already seeing?
Grab my ebook Thinking in Analogies, filled with examples and questions that turn everyday observations into living ideas.