All the Difference

I'm intrigued by turns of phrase that change meaning depending on perspective and context.

Just and the Unjust
We normally think of the scripture that God sends rain on the "just and the unjust" as meaning that bad things happen to all. But that's because modern minds think of rain as negative. In the original Biblical context, it meant that good things happen to all. In a primarily agricultural society, rain was a definitely good thing.

The Messiah
I'm reading a book on spiritual growth called Secrets of the Vine by Bruce Wilkinson. He describes the Last Supper and footwashing scenes in the gospels through the disciples' eyes in ways I hadn't really thought about before. Jesus' words " I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you" and "Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also" (John 14: 18-19) are comforting to us. Words of peace and hope. But to the disciples, they were disheartening words of disillusionment. They knew Jesus was the Messiah but they had expectations for him to publicly and triumphantly deliver Israel from her oppressors and reign. Jesus' words were communicating to them that that wasn't going to happen.

The Road Not Taken
That passage from Secrets of the Vine reminded me of a literary example, that widely anthologized and oft quoted poem by Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken":

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I grew up believing the poem to be uplifting, especially the last two lines, as lauding the decision to take the road that "wanted wear" as virtuous and adventurous. But with further enlightenment and further examination of tone, I came to the conclusion, as do the usual world-weary critics of literature, that it was actually one of regret, or at the least, a sobering reflection on the irrevocable nature of, once made, our choices.

Not to end on a downer. It's just that I'm fascinated by how differently one thing can be interpreted by many.

P.S. Get the scoop on the Nobel Literature Prize winner here.