Whispers of Truth

We do ourselves much harm when we discount the veracity of Scripture, which seems to be especially common when reading from the Old Testament. Because something is so far removed from us, it becomes easy to question, overlook, or even read the astonishing narratives of God’s Word as “stories” instead of the revealed Word of God. We limit God’s Word to our feeble, limited understanding. Yet we should read ALL of God’s Word and read it as truth without either adding to or taking away from it. We read knowing that there is nothing beyond the ability of the One who authors the book and writes our story of faith. As I was finishing up the book of Joshua this morning, I came to the end where he sets up a stone under an oak tree in the courtyard of the sanctuary of the LORD (Josh. 24:26-27), telling the people that the stone would serve as a witness against all of them—including himself—in order that they would not deny their God. As I looked up one commentary and then another I saw a vast d...

One of my favorite things to do when I taught  literature  to high school students was ask them to look at a story from a different perspective in order to emphasize that point of view matters. This morning this came to mind as I read in Joshua of the Israelites crossing the Jordan river: The perspective of the story comes from its author, likely Joshua for most of the book although the Bible does not explicitly name him as such, and gives us the conditions from a vantage point of an Israelite watching the crossing of the Jordan. Naturally, that’s what the reader sees, too. We see from a distance of a biblical mile (2,000 cubits because that was Joshua’s command to the people as to the distance they should keep from the ark in 3:4) the priests step into the overflowing banks of the rushing Jordan river during its harvest time (3:15). The flow at this time and the depth would’ve been tremendous, and as we see later in 1 Chronicles 12:3-15 would’ve taken strong skilled men bles...