Joshua 2 - Operation Jericho: Redux

Before we get to today’s story about Rahab and the two Israelite spies she hid in her house, we need to talk about that weird word up top: redux. Basically, “redux” is a fancy Latin word that means “to bring back or be done again.” So, when I say that those hidden Israelites spies were in the middle of Operation Jericho: Redux, this means that they were redoing a spy mission that had failed before. So what went wrong last time? And why were the Israelites trying this mission again now?  Well, to understand that, we need to do a little recap of some of Israel’s history.

40 years before our story begins, God chose a man named Moses to lead the Israelites out of the land of Egypt. The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for over 400 years, meaning that the Egyptians forced the Israelites to do all kinds of hard work almost all day long without ever being paid. But when the Israelites cried out to God for help, God sent Moses to help free the Israelites.

This took some convincing though. Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, refused to let the Israelites go, so God sent plagues to change Pharaoh’s mind. These plagues showed how powerful God was by making things like frogs and bugs and hail and storms destroy Egypt. That’s a whole other story for another day, but finally, after 10 plagues, Pharaoh let the Israelites go free.

God did a whole bunch of other amazing stuff after that too. He parted the Red Sea so that the

Israelites could safely escape Pharaoh’s army. And when the Israelites got to the wilderness on the other side of the Red Sea, God made bitter water turn sweet so that the Israelites would have water to drink. God even appeared on a mountain in a storm of fire and lightning to show the Israelites His incredible power!

Anyways, after a year and a half in the wilderness, the Israelites finally made it to the Jordan River. On the other side of the river was Canaan, the land that God had promised to Israel a long time ago. However, the Israelites had no idea what was waiting for them in Canaan, so Moses sent in some spies to check out the land first.

You can read the full story in Numbers 13. But long story short, this first spying mission was a disaster! When the spies got back from Canaan, 10 of the spies freaked out that there were giant people guarding giant grapes there, which the Israelites decided was a giant problem. Too giant even for God to handle! In fact, this report made the Israelites so scared of the Canaanites that the Israelites forgot everything that God had done for them before and stopped trusting Him. And because of this, God told the Israelites that they would have to wander in the wilderness for another 38 years before they could finally enter Canaan.

Not all of these 12 spies forgot about God’s amazing acts through. Two of the spies – Joshua and Caleb – remembered those amazing things God had done for Israel, and they tried to convince the Israelites that God would help them take over Canaan too. Unfortunately, the Israelites didn’t listen to Joshua or Caleb, but at least in Joshua’s case, his faith in God was one of the main reasons why God chose him to become the leader of Israel when Moses died.

And this is where the story of Rahab and the spies begins. Joshua has just become the leader of Israel, and it’s finally time for the Israelites to enter Canaan. And I bet after 38 years of wandering in the wilderness, they were super excited.

Which is why I find it so weird that Joshua decided to play Mission Impossible yet again and send in a second round of spies. That plan had backfired hugely last time! – Why in the world would Joshua want to go through all that again? Sure, Joshua only sent in 2 spies this time instead of 12, but I’m sure there were still some Israelites who were thinking, “Oh no, not again!” as the spies made their way towards the closest Canaanite city: Jericho.

Now these two new spies must not have been very good at their jobs, because the Bible tells us that the king of Jericho knew the spies were in Jericho the whole time! It didn’t take him long to send a message to Rahab, that woman we mentioned before who lived in the house the spies were hiding in, demanding that she send the spies out to him!

So how do you think Rahab responded to this? Honestly, with spies hidden in her house, I bet she was pretty scared, just like the Israelites had been 38 years earlier. Actually, the whole city was probably scared! You see, the people of Jericho—

Hang on… We’ve talked about the Israelites and the Canaanites. Don’t the people of Jericho get a cool name? The Jerichoites? Jerichonians? Jerichoecians? Hmm… If you’ve got any good ones, feel free to throw a comment down below. Otherwise, we’ll just have to figure it out as we go along…

As I was saying, the Jerichoites knew that the Israelites had this huge army waiting just across the river. They had heard about the Red Sea and about how Israel had completely destroyed their enemies in the wilderness. So yeah, I’m sure it might have crossed Rahab’s mind to just hand over the two spies to the king. The king wouldn’t have been angry with her, the spies wouldn’t have been able to send their report back to Joshua, and maybe – just maybe – this would stop the Israelites from conquering Jericho.

But Rahab knew better. She knew that God was fighting for the Israelites and that Jericho probably wasn’t going to make it. So, instead, she hid the spies on her roof and told the king, “It’s true that the men came here. But I didn’t know where they had come from. They left at sunset, when it was time to close the city gate. I know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You might catch up with them” (Joshua 2:4-5, NIrV).

Now some of you might be thinking, “But wait a second… Rahab lied! Isn’t that wrong?” And honestly, this is something that even confuses adults. But what’s important here is what Rahab’s lie did. Yes, it was wrong of her to lie, but she lied in order to save two people’s lives. So even though God wouldn’t like it that she lied, He knows that she was trying to do the right thing by helping the spies escape.

And that’s exactly what she did after she sent the Jerichoecians on a wild goose chase. See, Rahab’s hose was built so that it was connected to one of the walls of Jericho. So all she had to do was let the spies climb out her window and down the wall and they’d be safely outside the city!

But I’m sure the spies were confused. Rahab and the Jerichonese were the enemies of the Israelites. Why was she helping them?

Her answer is amazing: “I know that the LORD has given you this land. We are very much afraid of you. Everyone who lives in this country is weak with fear because of you. We’ve heard how the LORD dried up the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt…. When we heard about it, we were terrified. Because of you, we aren’t brave anymore. The LORD your God is the God who rules in heaven above and on the earth below” (Joshua 2:9-11).

Did you catch that? The Jericoletians were terrified of the Israelites and their God! And Rahab? Rahab had learned today’s lesson better than the Israelites from 38 years ago who had seen God do all those amazing things. The second she heard about God parting the Red Sea, she knew that nothing was going to be able to stop Him from giving Jericho and the rest of Canaan to the Israelites. God’s legacy was just that great!

What’s a legacy, you might ask? A legacy is all the stories of the great things that someone has done. Wayne Gretzky’s legacy here in Canada is being the greatest hockey player who ever lived. Abraham Lincoln has a legacy for being one of the best US Presidents (and sporting an awesome hat and beard). Jesus’ legacy (among other things) was dying on the cross and rising again so that our sins could be forgiven. And Rahab’s legacy was showing great faith by hiding the Israelite spies even when she was scared.

We remember all of these people for the great things they did. In the same way, Rahab remembered and trusted God because of the incredible things He did for the Israelites. And – SPOILER ALERT – because Rahab remembered these things and trusted that God would save her if she asked the spies for help, He did! When the walls came tumbling down on the Jerickiwis, her house wasn’t destroyed.

Think about that for a second. Rahab’s house was PART OF THE WALL!!! Her house should have crumbled like the rest of the walls of Jericho. But because she trusted God, God did the impossible once again and somehow kept her house safe and intact when the rest of the walls fell apart. That’s just one more amazing thing to add to God’s legacy!

See guys: God’s actions leave a legacy we can trust. And because Rahab trusted in the God that she had heard so many amazing things about, she was saved! Just think: If the Israelites had recognized God’s legacy 38 years earlier, they wouldn’t have been stuck in the wilderness all that time. But when these two spies went back to Joshua and told him all about their adventure, we see that the Israelites had finally learned their lesson. They remembered God’s legacy and were finally ready to follow Him into the Promised Land!

Honestly, this is why I’m so thankful God has given us the Bible. It’s filled with stories that tell us all about God’s legacy and gives us reasons to trust Him! So make sure you take the time to read some of those stories. You’ll be amazed at the things you’ll learn! And it might just make you want to trust God a little more, just like Rahab.

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Hope you enjoyed that! Don't forget to comment your name for the people of Jericho. And come back next week when we talk about another really famous guy from the Old Testament: Samuel!

~Brentagious

Jonah 3-4: You Don't Deserve a Second Chance

Huh… That title’s a little harsh. I can’t actually mean that, can I? Well, give me a few minutes and you’ll see. But until then, I want to talk about something completely different.

The Bible is filled with some weird and wacky stories about prophets. A prophet, as we learned last week, is someone who delivers messages from God to His people. And man, these prophets did some strange stuff to deliver those messages. Elijah called down fire from heaven. Ezekiel laid on the ground for over a year. Isaiah ran around naked… (Don’t try that one at home kids!). But each of the prophets did those odd things because God asked them to.

Then there’s Jonah… Jonah ran away from God, risking a bunch of sailors’ lives in the process, and then got eaten by a fish to get him back on track. And when Jonah finally did go to Nineveh like God had wanted to all along, Jonah still got it wrong! As far as prophets go, I can’t see Jonah winning the “Prophet of the Year” award any time soon.

Now when I learned the story of Jonah in Sunday school, the moral of the story was usually that God can use anyone, even when we make mistakes. And don’t get me wrong, that’s absolutely true. After all, that’s exactly what we talked about two weeks ago. All we have to do is turn back to God, ask Him to forgive us, and then be willing to do what He asks from that point forward. We partly talked about that last week. And if Jonah’s story ended with Chapter 3, I’d say that those would be two great morals for the whole book.

But the problem is that we get to hear about what Jonah did after he preached to the Ninevites. And sadly, it’s not pretty. But let’s slow down for a second and first make sure that we know about the amazing thing that happened in Nineveh.

After brushing off the whale vomit, Jonah received another message from God telling him to do the same thing that God had told Jonah to do before. Go to Nineveh. Give the Ninevites a message from the LORD. Jonah had learned that running from God didn’t end well, so off to Nineveh he went. He would give them God’s message, and Jonah hoped it would come true.

See, the Ninevites were not very nice people. They were unkind, they hurt people, and they did whatever they wanted without ever thinking about what God wanted. So the message from God was that if the Ninevites kept acting like this, their entire city would be destroyed in 40 days.

Now as far as Jonah was concerned – as far as everyone in Israel was concerned for that matter – the Ninevites deserved to have their city destroyed! God was finally going to get rid of that cruel, awful city! And it was about time too!

So Jonah made sure that every single Ninevite knew what was coming. He went through the entire city for three days telling everyone he saw that in just over a month, BAM! Fire and lightning! Destruction! Nineveh would be history! Jericho’s walls coming down would have nothing on what God was going to do to Nineveh.

But as Jonah wandered the city telling everyone they were going to die in a blazing glory in a few weeks’ time, something incredible happened. The Ninevites realized that Jonah was serious. They realized that if they kept doing what they were doing – if they kept disobeying God – they were actually going to be destroyed.

For some of them, this would have been shocking. They didn’t know any better! They thought it was normal to be mean to others. But when Jonah came, they realized that what they were doing was wrong. And as a result, they repented – they were sorry for what they had done, changed their minds, and decided instead to listen to what God wanted them to do.

So, they fasted for a few days. This means that nobody ate or drank anything, and they used that time to say sorry to God instead. But even more importantly, they stopped doing those terrible things they were doing before. The king of Nineveh even sent out a message to the city, saying, “All of you must call out to God with all your hearts. Stop doing what is evil. Don’t harm others. Who knows? God might take pity on us. He might not be angry with us anymore. Then we won’t die” (Jonah 3:8-9, NIrV).

And you know what? God did take pity on them! When God saw that the Ninevites stopped doing those terrible things and started listening to Him, He showed His love and compassion to the people of Nineveh – people who didn’t deserve it – and God ended up not destroying the city after all!

Again, back when I was in Sunday school, this is where the story ended. Jonah had learned his lesson that God is willing to show love and compassion to everyone, including both the people of Nineveh and Jonah himself. The Ninevites were saved and probably had a big party to celebrate. And we all thought Jonah was down there celebrating too!

But that’s not what happens… The Bible tells at the beginning of Jonah 4, “But to Jonah this seemed very wrong. He became angry” (4:1).

Angry? Jonah was angry that God had forgiven the Ninevites? He thought it was wrong? And here I thought Jonah would have been happy!

Jonah goes on to say, “LORD, isn’t this exactly what I thought would happen when I was still at home? This is what I tried to prevent by running away to Tarshsish. I knew that you are gracious. You are tender and kind. You are slow to get angry. You are full of love. You are a God who takes pity on people. You don’t want to destroy them” (4:2).

That’s what made Jonah run away? It wasn’t because he was scared of the mean old Ninevites. No, it was because Jonah knew that if the Ninevites repented and turned back to God, then God’s love was so great that He would forgive them. Jonah didn’t think the Ninevites deserved this second chance. They had been terrible people. As far as Jonah was concerned, it was time for them to be destroyed. And sadly, the story ends with Jonah still thinking this.

But here’s the funny thing guys: None of us deserve a second chance. Yeah, I was being serious with that title. Not the Ninevites. Not Jonah. Not you or me. Because we sin – because we do things that are wrong and that God doesn’t like – we all deserve to be destroyed, just like Jonah thought the Ninevites should have been destroyed.

But you know what?  God wants to forgive everyone, even though we don’t deserve it. There’s a special word for this: mercy. Mercy means not getting what we deserve. Mercy means that when you do something wrong, you don’t get punished for it like you should be. God shows us mercy by forgiving us when we ask instead of punishing us like we deserve.

And there’s one very important reason why God is willing to do this. It’s because He sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross and rise again. When Jesus died, he took the punishment that we all deserve: death. Even though it was thousands of years ago for us, and hundreds of years after Jonah lived, Jesus died so that all of us could be forgiven. All we need to do is ask.

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s amazing that we serve a God who would do something like that. That He would make a way to save all of us, even though we don’t deserve it. And yeah, there may be days like Jonah where you think that someone else doesn’t deserve a second chance. But in those times, remember Jonah and the Ninevites. Remember that you don’t deserve a second chance either. And then remember that, because of Jesus, God still gives us one anyway.

                                                            

That’s it for Jonah! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this first big story as much as I’ve enjoyed telling it. Next week, we’re going back in time a little ways to talk about a guy named Joshua, a girl named Rahab, and that Jericho place I mentioned above that actually did get destroyed.  See you then!

~Brentagious

Jonah 2 - Swimming Lessons

How many of you like to swim? Honestly, swimming has never been my favourite way to spend a summer afternoon. Don’t get me wrong, I like splashing around in a pool or a lake as much as the next person, but don’t ask me to do intense water exercise for long periods of time.

In fact, I don’t think I ever made it past Level 3 in swimming lessons. I had learned to tread water well enough to stay afloat, so that was good enough for me. Never mind that people seven years younger than me are life guards and could probably swim three lengths of a pool in the time it takes me to do one, but man, you should see my front crawl! If my arms had only made big enough circles, I might have even made it to Level 4!

If I really think about it though, I’m pretty sure I already started to dislike swimming when I was 2 years old. I was at a friend’s house where I was dropped in his swimming pool. Twice. In the same day. And yes, I do remember looking up through the shimmering water and seeing a pair of arms reaching down to grab me. Actually, I think that’s my earliest memory.

So when we talked last week about how Jonah was thrown overboard to save some sailors from the storm God had sent, I can relate a little bit to how scared Jonah probably felt. Granted, what Jonah went through was a little worse since he got thrown into a sea, not a swimming pool – during a storm, not a sunny day – but I know how terrifying it feels to have water surround you and be unable to do anything about it.

Now before any of you at home get too worried, both of these stories have happy endings. I’m sitting here writing this, so obviously I survived my shallow end diving experiences (please don’t try that at home). And Jonah eventually goes on to fulfill his mission to preach to the Ninevites.

But what about the in-between? How do you think Jonah responded as he floated there in the water? Or as he started to sink a little bit? We have no idea how long Jonah was actually in the water for, but the Bible does tell us that deep waters were around him and that seaweed had wrapped around his head (Jonah 2:5 NIrV).

Of course, I’m just dragging this whole drowning bit out for dramatic effect. We all know that Jonah gets swallowed by a whale.

Or a giant fish. Let’s not get picky.

But if you thought drowning was scary, try to imagine what was going through Jonah’s head as he slowly made his way down to the belly of this whale/fish thing. There are no lights inside an animal. There are no couches or video games or Netflix. There isn’t any food. And even if Jonah did think about eating some of the other fish this bigger fish had eaten recently, there was no way to cook them up! So it’s dark, it’s boring, he’s hungry, and at first glance, it doesn’t seem like there’s any chance of him getting out of this fish without being digested.

But here’s what gets me. Jonah doesn’t respond with complaints or anger… He doesn’t sit there and say, “Is this your idea of a rescue God? Save me from drowning only for me to be eaten?” No! Instead of moping, Jonah prays to God and thanks Him for sending this giant fish to rescue him. He praises the God who saved him from the deep waters. When the sailors threw Jonah overboard, he probably thought that he was going to die. But in that moment, as the waves surrounded him, Jonah prayed to God and God saved him!

Not only that, but the end of Jonah’s prayer shows that he was truly sorry for not listening to God. Take a look at some of what Jonah prayed:

“Some people worship the worthless statues of their gods.

They turn away from God’s love for them.

But I will sacrifice a thank offering to you.

And I will shout with thankful praise.

I will do what I have promised.

I will say, ‘LORD, you are the one who saves.’” (2:8-9).

What was the thing that Jonah had promised? To be a prophet of the LORD! To go and bring God’s messages wherever God sent him, including to Nineveh.

What Jonah did at the end of his prayer is called repentance. This word means “to change your mind.” It means that Jonah told God that he was sorry for not obeying God before and that he was now changing his mind to do what God asked from that point forward. Repenting is something God wants all of us to do when we do things that are wrong, but thankfully most of us won’t have to pray that prayer from inside a fish at the bottom of the sea!

Of course, Jonah didn’t stay in that fish forever. God heard Jonah’s prayer from all the way at the bottom of the sea. And even though it took a little bit – three days to be exact – God answered that prayer when he gave the fish a bit of a tummy ache. This made the fish grow queasier and queasier until it rushed up to the surface and vomited Jonah back up onto dry land! (Gross, I know!).

But as Jonah waved good-bye to his fishy friend and finally started heading to Nineveh, I’m sure he spent some time thinking about the important lessons he had learned about prayer on this adventure. Jonah learned that God will always forgive and save those who cry out to Him for help. And Jonah learned that we should always praise God in our prayers, even when everything around us seems to be going wrong. Jonah prayed in two of the weirdest, scariest, and most hopeless places of life – the bottom of the sea and inside a fish. But in both of these places, Jonah never doubted that God could hear him.

Remember that. God hears all of our prayers at all times in all places. This is true when things are really calm and peaceful, or when things are scary and difficult. You don’t ever have to be afraid that God won’t hear you. He always does! Like Jonah, God can help you in the toughest of times. All He wants is for us to ask for His help, to praise and thank Him for what He has done and will do.

But sadly, even after surviving a storm and being eaten by a fish, Jonah still had one more lesson to learn about God’s love. But more on that next time. Until then, I should probably go find a swimming pool and practice my front crawl some more. Anyone for a dip in the lake on this fine January day?

~Brentagious

SSS: SSSS, or Why the Convoluted Title?

My favourite comic strip of all time is easily Calvin and Hobbes. That should be obvious to anyone who has seen my room given there’s a knitted Calvin and Hobbes that a friend made for me a few years back sitting on the shelf above my bed. I’ve always loved reading up on the adventures of that six year old boy and his stuffed tiger. Actually, his childhood has always made mine look kind of boring by comparison. Whereas I spent most of my time tracking down stars in Super Mario 64, Calvin was getting into all kinds of trouble with his anthropomorphic best friend.

My favourite story is still probably one of the Sunday Calvinball ones. (Side note: Please tell me I’m not the only one who tried playing this as a kid!) Calvin gets hit with the Calvinball and forgets to touch the opposite pole or something, two of the many made up rules that are never allowed to be repeated for each given play through. And as a result, he has to sing “the very sorry song,” a song which I still hum the same melody for every time I read it. It’s silly and kind of stupid, but it’s one of those strips I found hilarious as a kid and still get a kick out of today.

Now that I’m older though, I’m a lot more interested in the world that Bill Waterson created in his comic. Somehow, he managed to combine a simple art style with an attention to detail and realism that astounds me. Calvin, his parents, Susie Derkins, Miss Wormwood – heck, even Hobbes! – all seem like real personalities. But even Waterson himself agrees that part of the magic of the strip is that Calvin’s fantasies are often drawn with a greater realism than the so-called reality of the comic (He says so in an interview found in the book Exploring Calvin and Hobbes). And perhaps it’s this mixture of realism and wonder that draws us in, resulting in some fascinating, hilarious, and sometimes even deeply moving stories.

I’ve grown to love the role of Calvin’s dad in the strip more now too. At first, he seems like this boring, unexceptional man. His life goal seems to be building Calvin’s character. He goes to his desk job, he eats oatmeal, he actually likes going for a run at 6:00 AM in the middle of winter… I personally find that last one a little unbelievable, but if that’s you, more power to you. On the whole, however, Calvin’s dad seems like a regular, boring man who tends to lead a rather stale life.

Then there’s this wordless Sunday strip fairly early in the comic’s run where, after a fresh snowfall, Calvin begs his dad to play outside with him. His dad is swamped with work and has to say no, resulting in a very sad Calvin. Dad works for a few more minutes, looks at his watch, looks out the window, and then books it outside to make a snowman with his son. And for a few brief hours, he trades the staleness of life for a fun-filled, snowy afternoon.

There’s a point to all of this, I promise. But first, a small digression to a very different part of the strip.

I remember being rather annoyed by G.R.O.S.S. as a kid. This wonderfully frustrating little acronym stands for Get Rid Of Slimy GirlS, Calvin and Hobbes’ secret club where they plan all sorts of dastardly pranks against the ever so slimy Susie next door. Both the club and its resulting antics were funny enough, but even Grade 4 me was bothered that the acronym wasn’t correct. And yet, funny enough, these strips are part of the reason why I chose the name for this blog. (I’ll give you a moment to flit your eyes to the top of the screen and make the connection.)

Let’s do the math here for a moment (or maybe the English). This is the first of the Second Sunday Switch-Up’s that I’ll be posting each month. The titles for these will always be prefaced with the alliterative acronym SSS. Additionally, should I apply Calvin’s amazing acronym making skills to Shed the Sunday School Glasses, then the blog’s abbreviated title is also a whopping 4 S’s instead of the usual SSSG.  

I’m an English major. Don’t ask me why, but we get kicks out of things like alliteration. And the possibility to abbreviate what I’m writing today to SSS: SSSS while making a reference to my favourite comic was just too good to pass up.

However, most of you probably aren’t English majors. And you probably don’t care that much about alliteration or obscure references to comics. So to avoid boring the limited readership I currently have with my alliterative nonsense, let me return to the more legitimate reasoning behind why I chose this title for my blog.

Before I started university, I attended a tiny school off the coast of British Columbia called Capernwray Harbour. I’ve been a city kid my entire life, so spending a year on an island in the middle of nowhere was a huge adjustment. But getting to see deer walk up to our classroom or eagles dive bomb out of the sky on a daily basis was pretty cool.

Anyways, one of the lectures there was on when Jesus fed the 5000, and our lecturer for that week said something that has stuck with me since. You may be able to guess where I’m going with this. Just before he started to read the story, he asked us to take off our Sunday School glasses. Now I’ve obviously replaced “take off” with “shed” for alliterative reasons – TOSSG just doesn’t have as good a ring to it – but the point still stands.

One of the more challenging things I’ve found when teaching kids (or even when talking to adults) who have grown up in Christian homes is that they’ve heard some Bible stories hundreds of times. And believe me, I’ve been there. Stories like the feeding of the 5000 can become stale really quickly. You can easily lose a little wonder and amazement each time you hear these stories until eventually it seems normal that someone turned 5 loaves and 2 fish into enough food to feed 5000 men (plus women and children).

The danger with this is that the messages behind these stories can easily grow stale too. When we regurgitate from memory a bleh, muddled version of a story that we’ve pieced together from umpteen remembered tellings, we tend to find that the teachable moments of those stories become just as bleh and muddled. Or, to put it another way, we grow bored with the message as we grow bored with the story. Kind of like Calvin’s dad in his everyday life, bogged down by boring work so that he forgets the beauty and wonder of an afternoon in the snow with his son.  

And honestly, while I have no data to back this up, I sometimes wonder if this staleness towards the stories of the Bible is one of the reason adults walk away from their childhood faiths. The miraculous becomes uninteresting, which in turn leads people to question the truth, reliability, and relevance of not just each individual story but that of the entire Bible.

This is why I think the idea of taking off one’s Sunday School glasses when reading Scripture, especially for the more familiar stories, is so important! To shed the Sunday School glasses is to stop just glazing over whenever you hear or read a story you’ve heard plenty of times before. What this phrase is asking you to do – and what I’m asking you to do when you read my versions of these stories – is to consider the details behind the story that the Bible might only implicitly address.

For instance, if we as Christians believe that the Bible is true, as we should, then we are saying that these are actual stories about real people. That means that Jonah ACTUALLY got swallowed by a fish, Jericho’s walls ACTUALLY came tumbling down after the Israelites walked around them, and Jesus ACTUALLY turned a kid’s lunch into a village-feeding feast. When you stop to picture some of these moments, you should experience nothing less than sheer amazement! But we so often miss this because the stories have become too familiar.

Moreover, because these stories are about real people, the characters of the Bible would have had real, human reactions to things. So the next time you read a Bible story, think about the freak out, the terror, the shock and awe, the wonder and excitement that the events of that story might have inspired in the characters involved. Although the Bible doesn’t make a huge deal out of his reaction, I highly doubt that Moses just walked up to the burning bush as if there was nothing out of the ordinary! If it helps, think about how you might have reacted if you were the one confronted by the divine in these situations. It’ll help you to remember the humanity behind biblical characters.

Shedding the Sunday School glasses also means seeing the comedy, the pain, and the irony in different Bible stories. The Bible is filled with witty sarcasm, hilarious situations, and an emotional intensity that can only be accessed if you will actually take a second to look a little deeper into some of the stuff you’re reading. And when you do take that time – when you read Scripture with more than a surface glance – both the stories and the messages behind them will come alive to you in a way that might surprise you.

That’s my goal when I write these posts. I don’t plan on providing some revolutionary theological message behind a classic parable or some new interpretation of some Old Testament historical narrative. My goal is to uncover the truth that is in the Bible, not try and make it say something it was never trying to say. But I do hope that by asking you to shed your Sunday School glasses, it will help restore some of the childlike wonder you might have lost when reading these stories. And, in turn, I hope that will make the truth behind these stories easier to relate to as well!

And if I inspire you to enjoy alliteration or comics a little more in the process, even better!

~Brentagious