Just finishing up a few last sessions of Bible study before taking a summer break. This week’s “homework” was to address the question, “What is the Bible?” So, here is my response…
What Is the Bible?
Written by The Q.O.E.
June 20, 2023
The Book
Read to me as a very small child…
Full of Tall Tales, O, so ancient and wild:
Of God’s Paradise and the beings within…
Enter The Serpent,
Who lured them to sin.
Of Adam and Eve and their murderous kid…
He bludgeoned his brother –
Yeah –
That’s what he did!
Out of the Garden and into the world,
With all of its trials and terrors unfurled.
First, God-yes! Then, God-no!
A carnival ride!
A challenge to keep track of who’s on God’s side.
From Eden to Noah…think Sodom, Gomorrah…
From Abram and Sarah to Moses and more,
Ah!
Conquering heroes and prophets and Kings…
Judges and villains and angels with wings.
From Isaac and Jacob to Joseph and bandits…
A chain of the chosen plus broken commandments.
First, Israel’s “hot” for their Leader, the LORD…
Then cold as a stone for His worship and word!
A Kingdom divided…and then reunited…
God disappointed…His Love unrequited.
Yet,
Every so often,
A sunbeam breaks through
In the form of a person both loyal and true…
Noah and Abraham…Deborah and Ruth…
Loving believers, whose treasure was truth.
While God, understandably angry with Man,
Couldn’t quite stand to abandon His Plan.
This record of God’s experimentation,
Of turning Man loose in the midst of Creation,
Is first the Love Story of our Deity…
And then, the unfolding of our family tree…
Detailed instruction on what we call “living”…
Loving and parenting, labouring, giving.
A long list of miracles, prophecies, powers
Pours over characters, practically showers!
It’s long and confusing, defies explanation…
Yet scholars keep trying in mucho translations.
Suddenly,
The New Testament shows…
Because, at this point, nearly everyone knows,
We’re totally hopeless at saving ourselves…
So, put the old Laws on antiquity’s shelves.
Lest sins of the fathers for longer enslave us…
And…
Enter
A Saviour,
Who suffered to save us.