Imagine you live in Jesus' time. Maybe you're a tradesperson in a village or something. Jesus comes to your village and does some stuff. Perhaps he heals someone and tells a couple of parables. Maybe he clashes with the local religious leaders. He's there a couple of days but then he's off to the next town. You've been deeply touched by something he did or said - perhaps it was your relative that got healed, or he told a story about who it was that aided a helpless man - and that struck you deeply because you didn't see the punchline coming...
Anyway the point is Jesus' two days in your village made a difference to you. But that's all you got: two days, a healing and a story or two. You didn't get to see all the other stuff he did elsewhere (though perhaps you heard rumours). You didn't see him calm a storm or feed 5000 or talk about the religious leaders being like snakes. You weren't there when he died and you never saw him after his resurrection - if that even happened.
But the scrap of what you have is enough.
Now think about being a follower of Jesus at some time in history before the internet, before TV, before books. For most of history between the life of Jesus and now most folk couldn't read, didn't have access to books and had to rely on their religious leaders to tell them the stories of Jesus. They memorised some of them.
But the scrap of what they had was enough.
We're trying get back to the idea that what we have in front of us is enough.
It's great to put the stories of Jesus in the context of the Old Testament. It's fab to interpret Jesus' life and teachings through Paul's writings. Refer to commentaries, listen to sermons, do an Alpha course, join a house group. All fantastic, if you have the opportunity to go for some of that, you should.
But if you can't, the precious jewels of what you have, the gold dust we have in front of us, is enough.
When we meet on alternate Sundays all we have is the story, our thoughts about the story, and our thoughts about each other's thoughts. And that's enough.
Lectio Divina
Lectio Divina is a contemplative way of reading the Bible, that bible thing isn't strictly Lectio Divina, but there are similarities.
You may find this resource helpful.