All in the Context

I think I may be getting wiser because I can now laugh at my foolishness. A song came across my feed recently with the main lyrics being: "Leave her, Johnny, leave her." I was irked. A song encouraging men to leave their wives! I couldn't get to the app to change the song at that moment -- but if I could have, I would have turned it off. Of course, this failure indicated to the computer that I liked the song and wanted to hear it...multiple times.
But in hearing it multiple times, I grasped the context. It was a sailing song...and the "she" was a ship...that was sinking (or maybe docked in its final port...hard to say for a land lubber). I laughed -- yes, Johnny, please leave her. The course that was repeated and catchy -- couldn't give you what you needed to understand the song. And some of the verses weren't clear either. You had to listen to the whole song...just like the Bible. You can't understand the riches of the New Testament apart from the promises (and the struggles) of the Old Testament. It benefits our study of any portion of Scripture to know the rest of God's Word, and apply it to the passage we are reading, thus synthesizing everything God is saying. Otherwise, you think a sailor avoiding a watery grave is a man in a bar abandoning his wife!