This is a guest post from Angela Suh. Angela lives in Austin, TX. She is wife to Halim, a pastor at the Austin Stone Community Church, and mom to three fun and crazy kids, Malachi (5), Evie (4) and Moses (2). You can read more from her at suhangela.wordpress.com.
From my childhood, I remember listening to the Bible as a series of stories. Moses parts the Red Sea. David slays the giant. The Good Samaritan helps his enemy. Never presented with a cohesive picture of what was happening in Scripture, I thought of it simply as illustrations of how we ought to follow God. So I walked away with some impressive moral imperatives:
- Obey in hard times like Moses.
- Be courageous like David.
- Be generous like the Good Samaritan, even to people you don’t like.
- Moses parting the Red Sea isn’t primarily a story about a man who has great faith in God and trusts him when the odds seem impossible. Instead, it’s telling of a people enslaved and unable to free themselves. It’s the story of their great God who sends them a deliverer to lead them out of slavery. This story demonstrates our slavery to sin and point us to Jesus, the One who delivers us.
- David and Goliath isn’t primarily the story of a courageous boy who stands up to a great enemy and emerges victorious. Instead, it’s a story of a desperate and weak people in need of a deliverer from a great enemy, and their great God who provides a rescuer exactly when he’s needed. We see that we, ourselves, are desperate and weak and hopeless apart from God providing a great Rescuer.
- The story of the Good Samaritan isn’t mainly about us and how we ought to love people, even when they hate us. It’s about our God, sending His Son, to rescue a people that were His enemies. That He gave everything to save a people that hated Him.
jana says
Girl, you nailed it. So rich! I will re-read this many times.