Pathways Press.com

Written by Pete Enns, a contemporary professor of Biblical Studies.

We need to give our crisis a narrative, something to tell ourselves and others so we can make some sense of the pain and find hope for tomorrow. We may tell our story to a friend over coffee or on a blog. We might journal—or even write a book or two. And the Judahites, in the centuries following the return from Babylon, created what would come to be called the Jewish Bible or Christian Old Testament. I don’t mean to suggest that nothing had been written down until this sixth-century national crisis of faith. Certainly, the Israelites long before had written stories, accounts of battles, court records of kings, and poems and songs to express who they were, where they came from, and how their God, Yahweh, is wrapped up in all of it. But it was only in the wake of the crisis of God’s abandonment that they needed to tell their whole story—to make sense of how broken their past had been and how shattered it had become as they wept by the waters of Babylon (as Psalm 137 puts it).  Exile is the changing circumstance that brought the ancient Judahites to their knees and forced them to engage their past and reimagine God for their present and future. The ancient Judahites, who would later come to be called Jews, had to tell their story. They had to account for the crisis, to process it, and to move forward to a better future. That’s how the Bible was born. Out of crisis. And the question that drove these ancient writers and editors was the wisdom question we have been looking at all along: “What is God up to today, right here and now?”

Prayer:

Written by John Baillie (1886-1960) was a Scottish theologian and  a Church of Scotland minister.

For the power Thou hast given me to lay hold of things unseen;

For the strong sense I have that this is not my home;

For my restless heart which nothing finite can satisfy, I give Thee thanks, O God.

For the invasion of my soul by Thy Holy Spirit;

For all human love and goodness that speak to me of thee;

For the fullness of Thy glory outpoured in Jesus Christ; I give Thee thanks O God. Amen.