Have you ever had an experience in which you thought you knew what was going on, but it turned out to be something else? One example is that someone yells "Hey!" at you, and you think you're being attacked in some way. Then you discover he was trying to get your attention because you were dragging something caught in the door of your car.

Sometimes couples misunderstand one another. Several times I have found myself talking with my wife and seeing her eyes get intense, her brow turn up a bit, and I have thought: "Why is she getting upset with me?" When I checked out my imagination, I discovered that she was not angry at all; she was trying to concentrate on what I was saying.

That brings me to a phenomenon that I have noticed repeatedly in the Bible. Jesus quotes the Old Testament in the midst of some kind of narrative, something that is happening. What He says has impact on its own, and so it might seem to mean one thing, but when I look under it one more layer, I discover it has another and, for me, more fascinating meaning.

I will give two examples.

First, from the cross, as Jesus was being crucified, He said, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?" I have read that many times and always considered it from the theological point of view Jesus is expressing the utter desolation of being cut off from relationship with His Father, a relationship that He had enjoyed from before the foundation of the world as a member of the godhead. This separation came about when sin, the sin of the world, all the sin ever committed in the past, currently going on, and whatever would still be committed all of it, and sin in itself as a malevolent force, was put upon Jesus and condemned, judged, put far away from the presence of God. So, I still believe that happened, but I now also understand that beneath that layer something else was going on.

Jesus was teaching. He was not just a victim in anguish, saying something that expressed what He was going through at the moment; He was quoting Psalm 22, in which a graphic description of what he was going through was prophetically inserted into one of David's hymns of praise. Imagine, while hanging there dying, he was still teaching and alerting people, as if to say: "Pay attention to what is going on!"

Second, when Jesus responded to his disciples' request that He teach them to pray, He started off telling them that when they prayed, they should say: "Father, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come…". I became fascinated with that phrase, "Hallowed be thy name". It's a form of an imperative that might read, "Let thy name be hallowed" and the term "hallowed" is a form of the verb hagiadzo (make holy, sanctified, or set aside as special). This point of prayer, in the form of an imperative (think of it; the petitioner is being told by Jesus to tell God what to do, and I find that in itself rather startling), is linked to another, "Let thy kingdom come". Are these two different things, or are they related in some way? Again, there is a more subtle layer.

Jesus could have been thinking again of His knowledge of the Old Testament. In Isaiah 29:17 and following the prophet tells of a time of blessing in which the "deaf will hear words of a book…" and "the needy of mankind will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel". At that time, at the vindication of God's programme in Israel, when Israel sees the work of His hands in their midst, "They will sanctify My name; indeed, they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob and will stand in awe of the God of Israel". In Ezekiel 36 God says, "I will vindicate the holiness of my great name…" for I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you: and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes…"

So, Jesus was not just saying that when we pray, we should ask that God's name be made sacred, because it already actually is. He was telling His disciples to fervently and prayerfully seek the coming of God's kingdom, especially in their very own hearts. He was telling them to let God sprinkle them and make them clean. He was telling them to let God's Spirit reign in their lives, and to make it their prayer that that be so.

When people communicate, they express themselves in some form of discourse. So, there is content to what is said, and there is also a process, or how it is said. The words in such discourse have face value that is often contextualised by the manner in which the words are communicated. There is also a layer of meaning just beneath the face value what people mean by what they express through verbal and non-verbal discourse. In order to understand what people mean by what they express, one often has to consider contextual variables that relate to previous things these people have said or previous events in their lives.

When psychotherapists attempt to understand what people mean by what they say, there is a hermeneutic of experience they attempt to navigate the what and how of the current moment, coupled with the existence of effects or unfinished business from past experiences.

Whether I am making sense of the Bible or what other people in my life do and say, more often than not, I find it is wise to peel back what presents itself on top and see if there is a layer of meaning beneath that helps me to understand.