Love Has a Name

You know it is hot when you open up your peanut butter in order to make breakfast and it is quite literally sweating. Beads of condensation dramatically roll down the sides of the jar and form a tiny puddle of peanut butter water in the pit of many late night spoonfuls.

I gave thanks to the Lord for the humour I found in that because it made me chuckle and in that moment I experienced the funny bone of Jesus.

I’m currently living abroad in Southeast Asia serving the Lord and this was a real blunt reminder that I’m not living in Canada anymore. I say that because I have been here for several months and I feel like I’m at home, but often I forget that home no longer means Canada.

However, it got me thinking… to praying. I began to recall many passages in the Bible which are pretty astounding and at the very least cause bewilderment within some of the most “Christian” people I know and hopefully for those who are not yet in a relationship with Christ.

While this post is not an encyclopedia there is truth and I encourage everyone to read, research and explore these enigmas further.

The first and one beautiful passage in Scripture I thought of was Job 38:4-7 (NLT).

⁴ “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
    Tell me, if you know so much.
⁵ Who determined its dimensions
    and stretched out the surveying line?
⁶ What supports its foundations,
    and who laid its cornerstone
⁷ as the morning stars sang together
    and all the angels^[a] shouted for joy?”

Such a beautiful explanation from God and a demonstration of His sovereignty. I take a specific passage, verse 7, and share that in fact scientists have detailed how stars make noise and in fact can be said to sing.

In 2015 a team of scientists explain how that when stars accumulate new matter they generate sound. This was also tested in a laboratory and the scientists state that, “one of the few locations in nature where we believe this effect would occur is at the surface of stars.” Source: https://earthsky.org/space/do-stars-make-sounds

This may possibly seem like divine poetry but if we do believe, which I do, that the Bible was transcribed by man yet is in fact the inspired Word of God as shown by the Father in Heaven, we see then in this passage that God, the Creator, explains that His stars sing. Something that obviously would not be known to the scribe at that time.

My second passage I came to was Job 26:7 NLT.

“7 God stretches the northern sky over empty space
    and hangs the earth on nothing.”

Again this may not seem like much to us reading today, lest we forget that at this time in history people thought the earth sat on a person or animal. In the year 1650, 3000 years later, that was discovered to be false and this verse to be true.

These are only 2 examples of biblical truths however, and there are others. For example:

* Wash using running water – Historically doctors would examine living patients after examining dead patients and subsequently cross-contaminating them leading to death.

* Life is in the blood – Doctors used to bleed patients out and literally extract large quantities of their blood believing that this would cure them however today we know this to be not true, healthy or life giving.

As previously mentioned this is only a scratch on the surface of truth which exists within Scripture, so I hope you will go and seek further the mysteries that the Bible contains. How many can you find?

Finally, the examples of personification in the Bible are so elegant and numerous it seems almost impossible that one can read a page without seeing how God describes His creation. Another of my favourites (I have a lot) is from the New Testament.

“But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”  Matthew 6:30 ESV.

God has not breathed His word to be copied down and buried within the walls of a book.

While it is true God spoke His word, we cannot help but to be engrossed by the very same words. Words like those in Matthew 6 that our Father, our Maker, the One True God clothes the gross of the field and so then will He not clothe us? Such a representation of truth using words leaves any reader shaking at the eloquence of the writing of these ancient writers.

If someone were to write a nearly 1000 page love letter to the world today we would not doubt that his or her words were in fact enkindled by something outside of their own ability.

I believe in part because I have read, do read and will continue to read the words, although written by men, were breathed by God and proven by time.