I was talking with a (brand new) friend yesterday about the Old Testament. She said she'd thrown her bible at the end of Judges. She took a week off. And when I asked her why, she said "because it's really messed up." I didn't exactly know what she was referring to, so I asked her to explain a few of the stories she was referring to. After, I had to agree, and add that Genesis, has been disturbing me.

The Old Testament, is offensive. But for that, it is also encouraging. It shows me two things especially, that Jesus Christ really has always been the Word. He is still the stumbling block for us all today, causing us to be offended in our religious and neat and orderly ideas, in our desire to be perfect and do it all in our own strength, in our wanting to turn all of the heroes of the faith into perfect little bible felt characters to tell the kiddos about. And secondly, it convinces me that God is committed to using us in His plan. He wants relationship with us, the screwed up self-preserving, selfish wretches that we are. And that though we fall 7 times, it's not over. We can still stand up and be righteous, because He is committed to us, as He was to Moses, who lacked faith at times and had a temper, who reacted, to Jacob who lied and manipulated and stole from his brother, to Isaac who told the same lie that his father did. He's a God who's not afraid to tell the icky parts. Just as He's a God in the New Testament who's not afraid to eat with tax collectors and prostitutes, and to love and call men who He knows are going to fall and deny Him for a time. I love it. I love it that He wrote books that make us want to throw our bible's across the room. Because in the end, if He can use Samuel and if he can LOVE Abraham and David, I can believe He can use and love me. His love is bigger, stronger, deeper and wider, and it has been for all history and time, and before. Because in the beginning was the Word. And the Word is also Love.