By Kat Silverglate © 2026
I think she was attempting to help parents bridge the disconnect between the way children in a digital age are exposed to information and the way older, non-digital natives grew in knowledge. Here’s the gist of her word picture.
When pre-digital learners looked at a clock to understand time, they were invited to a bigger context right on the face of the time piece. They didn’t see a fixed number on a screen or device. Not a precise frozen moment. They saw a small hand pointing to a specific hour of the day or night surrounded by the hours before and the hours after. They saw a minute hand surrounded by the 59 other minutes in that hour. They saw how many minutes had passed since the last hour started and how minutes were yet to tick away before the next one began. Yes, they were learning how to tell the exact time – how to answer a specific question: what time is it right now? -- but, they were doing so while being exposed to a robust picture loaded with context clues about where time fits in a bigger scheme.
I can’t remember now who this word-picture-drawing woman was, but like musical chords that sometimes resonate instantly with our hearts, her visual went right to the section of my brain marked “that-is-so-true.” Revelations that end up there tend to get tested quickly because they’re like little magnets. We start to notice things that are related but not exactly the same. Things that confirm or contradict the new epiphany. Things that make the discovery more nuanced, richer, bigger, fuller, clearer, more real, truer. The gradual magnification of revelation creates a little fire in us to satisfy the craving for completeness that truth teases up.
I don’t remember if it was the same woman who made this connection or if it was a different person, but paper calendars are another great example of context built right into an object. Just as the clock-face made learners look again and again at where the short and long arms fell in relation to the rest of time, those annual calendars our grandparents hung in the kitchen – the ones covered with birds or flowers or cars or puppies -- helped us see each month in connection with the rest of the year and each day in connection with the rest of the month. How many days until my birthday or Easter or summer vacation? How long has it been since we visited Grandpa? The context was right there in plain sight. Part of the package. The examples, of course, are endless, including the arrival of AI and platforms that move us further away from encyclopedias with context on each surrounding page toward pin-point digital searches that give precise responses with no meaningful framework.
Perhaps few stories better exemplify the fire ignited when the value of context is first appreciated by a learner than that of Samuel Hubbard Scudder, a Harvard science student in the mid-1800’s. Wanting to become an expert in insects, he went directly to a renowned professor who ran a preeminent lab and explained why he wanted to become an expert in the field. The professor asked when he wanted to start his studies. When Scudder responded “now,” the professor giddily pulled a glass jar from a shelf, grabbed a dead fish dripping with stinky yellowed alcohol, and plopped it in front of the aspiring expert. He was instructed to wet the specimen regularly, so it didn’t dry out, and then to report his observations about the fish to the professor when he felt he was done with his examination
Ten minutes later, Scudder decided he had gleaned all that could be observed from staring at the fish, but the professor was nowhere to be found. So, for the next several hours, he looked at the face, belly, top, mouth, eye lids, side angle, ¾ angle, and every other angle he could tilt the smelling thing. When the professor still didn’t return, he took a lunch break and went at it again. He stuck his fingers in the mouth to see how sharp the teeth were. He started counting scales in rows. Finally, he picked up a pencil and started to draw it. Just as he began to see things he hadn’t noticed before, the professor returned for a report.
Scudder went into great detail about the fringed gill arches, the pores on the head, the fleshy lips, the lidless eyes, the lateral lines, the spinous fins, the forked tail, the compressed body - but the professor, didn’t seem impressed. Looking somewhat disappointed, he said: "You have not looked very carefully... You haven't even seen one of the most conspicuous features... look again, look again!
So, with the assurance that there was indeed oodles more to discover, he started his task again with “a will.” He went at it for hours. Discovering one new thing after another, he eventually confessed to the professor, “I see how little I was [seeing] before.” The teacher told him to go home for the night and come back with a better answer in the morning. That night, the student turned the fish over and over again in his head until he figured out the key feature he’d missed. The next morning, the professor seemed as excited as Scudder that he might be able to see what the professor saw. When he disclosed the new fact, the professor was delighted. Scudder, relieved and ready to move on, asked, “what do I do next?” With bursting excitement, the teacher responded:
“Oh, look at your fish!”
What? There was still more? Look again? For three more days he looked again and again. Three days of reporting followed by the same energetic response: “look, look, look.” Look again.
The original story in non-paraphrased form was first published in 1874 in Every Saturday magazine [Vol 16]. The original ends with these words by Scudder about the inestimable value of his introduction to the vital necessity of learning to look again:
“This was the best entomological lesson I ever had, -- a lesson whose influence has extended to the details of every subsequent study; a legacy the professor has left to me, as he left it to many others, of inestimable value, which we could not buy, with which we cannot part.”
Scudder went on to become “perhaps the greatest entomologist of his time” in the words of experts in his field.
The Scriptures teach that Christ was sent in human form to us as the exact representation of God’s being. As the radiance of God’s glory. Hebrews 1:3. Like the clock. Like the calendar. The context was built into the package God chose to reveal Himself to mankind. Do you want to see God? Look at Him. Do you want to know God’s character? Look at Him. Do you want to know what is good and right and pure and true and noble and worthy of magnification? Look at Him. Do you want to know what came before and what comes after? Look at Him. Look again. Look again. Look again.
Theologian Timothy Keller describes how Christ’s incarnation – His coming to earth in the flesh -- contextualizes God:
“Jesus’ incarnation was itself an act of contextualization. God did not just come to earth as a human. He came as a Jewish Galilean, a particular, culturally contextual human being, so we could understand and grasp who he is. Jesus is the Word become flesh (John 1:14). He is the “exact representation” in human form “of [God’s] being” and of “the radiance of God’s glory” (Hebrews 1:3). God adapted to us and accommodated human nature. Timothy Keller, https://redeemercitytocity.com
A professor at the seminary I attended used a science analogy that I’m guessing our new friend Scudder may have loved. A microscope takes something small and makes it seem bigger than it is – something we are often encouraged to do with ourselves in the context of our own cultural moment. Magnify our accomplishments, our gifts, our strengths, our images. Grow them larger and larger so that people will look at us and look again. Now think of a telescope. A telescope takes something enormous, like a planet, and brings it close enough for us to examine. Jupiter is vastly bigger than earth. One thousand three hundred earths could fit inside one Jupiter. Yet, it looks to the naked eye like a pin prick in the sky. Until you choose to magnify it. To bring it close. To look again.
Do you want to reflect the glory of God? Start by looking at Him from every angle. No matter how many times you look, you cannot come to the end of the revealed things God intends for us to discover. Deut. 29:29. And according to the Scriptures, we are being transformed when we as the adopted children of God magnify Him:
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
2 Cor. 3:18
What will we behold? Magnify? Become telescopic for? What we magnify matters because what we magnify, we become.
Our Mission Part One – Look Again:
In your mission pack you have a credit card sized magnifier. Here’s our responsiveness challenge. Put that magnifying card in a place where you can easily see it all month long. For the next 30 days, spend a few minutes each day meditating on the attributes of God. Perhaps begin a list from what you already know. Then look again until you find more. Don’t know where to start? Consider slowly reading the Gospel of John. Use that magnifier as a bookmark. Pray before you read. Ask the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of your heart. To show you more. Write down every attribute you can find. Ask the Lord to magnify Himself in you as you meditate on Him. To transform you. To move you from glory to glory.
Our Mission Part Two -- Our Birthday Celebration
In your mission pack, you also have a row of sticky eyes. Four sets. The Ridiculous Hour will be six years old on March 31, 2026. This is our 75th Mobile Mission. Will you help us magnify what the Lord has done? Looking back over the missions you’ve participated in or listened to or read, ask yourself, did something “stick?” Were your eyes fixed in a new way on the Lord, who He is, all He’s done, is doing, promises to do? Consider sending us a set of those eyes with a note so we can celebrate.
With the remaining sticky eyes… as the months ahead unfold… consider sending us a set of those eyes if the Lord uses a mission to make something “stick.” Your note will help us stay encouraged as we grow together from glory to glory.
Amen? Amen!
