I am studying Ignatian spirituality for Advent, and that's about finding God in all things. Learning how to approach scripture has helped me to find God and welcome him into my thoughts. I have taken a course on how to read the Bible, have read Fr. Dan Harrington's wonderful little book on the subject, and I have studied the Vatican II document, Dei Verbum. You have to understand the literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical senses of scripture. Here Adam Hincks, S.J. gives an exciting example of how it's done:
Consider the passage of Israel through the Red Sea. The literal sense is that God rescued the Jewish people from slavery. The allegorical sense foreshadows baptism in Christ as God’s rescue of his people from the slavery of sin. The moral senses are many, but one might be the need to trust in God’s providence in difficult situations. The anagogical sense is that God is leading us from this present world of slavery to an eternal homeland.
The Exodus is a classic example of how the senses of Scripture are at play, but they can be sought throughout the Bible and used as a tool for seeing God’s presence in a particular passage.
http://www.ibosj.ca/2013/12/christ-with-us-in-scriptures.html (online post Dec. 6, 2013).
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