KELSIE PETERSEN | Contributor and a Boy-Mom |
All my life I have been a reader, and books have been my friends over the years. When we moved off our acreage into a temporary townhome and had to prepare for unknown living arrangements beyond that, I chose to pare down my book collection. Being an elementary teacher and then homeschooling my own boys all the way through elementary, I had an impressively large collection to comb through. I took out my favorites and put the rest on shelves for a garage sale. I estimated I sold around 200 books, and I still donated 8 large boxes of books to a local school. Of what I kept, only a small amount has been unpacked, because I am currently short on shelf space. Books truly bring me joy.
A good book really is like a familiar friend. I return to my favorites over and over again, and even though I’m past the stage of mothering where storybooks take up time in my day, there are moments where I am reminded of the comforting familiarity of a phrase or a passage of a story one of my boys would bring to me to read to them, over and over. During our homeschool years, we read and memorized directly from Scripture, but storybook Bibles also became a part of our daily routine, and out of the many that I carefully chose and read to my children, there is one that has always stood out. I was grateful for the opportunity to teach part-time in a classroom and to read through that book again with my students. The wording of the Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name has been a balm for my heart not a few times over the years, and the simple way it expresses big Bible truths has been a reminder to me of Who everything really is about, especially when I become overwhelmed with life and feel the weight of everything that depends on me.
Not Your Average Storybook
The book starts out a little differently than most storybook Bibles, not with the story of creation, but with a preamble about who God is and what the Bible is. I’ve often recalled it and referred to it in my discussions with others, whether they be questioning Adventists, new formers, seasoned formers, or fellow believers. It talks about how some people think that the Bible is a book of rules, and while there are some good instructions in the Bible of “how life works best” (I choose not to read that phrase with my Adventist glasses on), the Bible is not about you and what you should be doing, but about God, and what He has DONE. The book goes on to say that others think the Bible is a book of heroes, showing people we should copy, but that most people in the Bible aren’t heroes at all. Rather, the Bible is about humans who often made big mistakes (sometimes on purpose), who got afraid, ran away, and were sometimes “downright mean.” The opening chapter closes by setting the stage with the Bible as a Story (capital “s”):
(It is) An adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a Prince who leaves his palace, his throne — everything — to rescue the one he loves.
It goes on to say:
There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling One Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them. It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of this Story, there is a baby. Every Story in the Bible whispers his name.
While I couldn’t quote you the exact words from these pages without looking, the big Bible truth of it is something that has become ever clearer to me in the years since I’ve left Adventism. The Bible isn’t about us; it’s about Him, and who we are made to be because of His love for us. In fact, I think this understanding of the Bible is the reason that I love the book of Ephesians so much, especially the first few chapters.
Paul Tells Us the Truth
I have long loved the way that Paul winds together and weaves a beautiful juxtaposition of who we WERE, and who we now ARE because of Christ. Like in my Storybook Bible, Paul spends chapter one on “set up” to what he’s about to say to the church in Ephesus. He expounds on the wonder of God the Father and of Jesus, using vivid language and grandiose adjectives. While reading chapter one, I always feel reminded of how limited my view of God is, and often of how immense the scope is of what He did on our behalf. While I’m sure Paul was seated at a table when writing this letter, the language and the exuberance it emits leave me with a mental image of him leaping around the room in excitement, filled with joy and gratitude to the Lord for what He did for us in Christ Jesus. Descriptions like “glorious grace,” “glorious inheritance,” “immeasurable greatness,” “great might” help paint an enormous and rich picture of the God who has accomplished everything on our behalf, a miracle which Paul is about to describe.
Chapter two of Ephesians is probably one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. While it starts out rather dark and depressing, the reminder of who we once were, and who every human being still is without being born again. I think one of the first things I noticed long ago about this passage is the verb tense. Everything Paul says to the Ephesians about the “bad news” is framed in something that is past and done.
I’ve often used the first few verses of Ephesians 2 as a teaching passage for my kids. When my kids have struggled to understand the behavior of other people, particularly non-believers, the first few verses have been helpful to them in understanding that without a heart changed by Christ, people are spiritually dead and without hope or direction. The version we memorized together said “Like the rest, we WERE, by nature, objects of wrath.” How sobering.
I used to tell my kids the first word of Ephesians 2:4 was the “biggest ‘but’ in Scripture,”and as boys, they thought I was pretty funny…
My favorite thing about this chapter, however, is how Paul takes this dark depiction of our lost and depraved state without Christ and catapults us into the light with just a few words. I used to tell my kids the first word of Ephesians 2:4 was the “biggest ‘but’ in Scripture,”and as boys, they thought I was pretty funny, BUT the truth is—the “but”, paired with “God” hurls us away from looking at our human selves, and back to focus on Him and what He has done.
The next few verses almost feel like tennis volley to me, with Paul going back and forth between “before you were this” and “now, because of Christ, you are this.” By the time we get to the end of verse 10, Paul has successfully convinced us of these things:
God is rich in mercy:
- He has loved us with a great love
- He loved us with this love, even when we were dead in our trespasses
- He made us alive together with Christ
- We have been saved by grace
- We have been raised up with him
- We are seated WITH him in the heavenly realms
- He will show us the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us
- We have been saved by grace (in case we forgot already), through faith
- Our salvation is not from ourselves
- Our salvation is a GIFT from God
- We cannot boast about our salvation because we didn’t do a thing
- HOWEVER we are created by Christ, in Christ, for good works which HE has planned for us.
Once again, when I reach the end of this passage, I picture Paul leaping from his seat with excitement over remembering—and reminding the beloved Ephesians—of what we have been saved FROM, and what we have been saved TO!
Reading the last section of this chapter makes me wish desperately that I was artistically talented. While I can draw a decent stick man, I wish there was a way to get the visual illustrations of this next passage out of my head and on to paper. Paul turns his next “compare and contrast” focus to the difference between Jew and Gentile, both before and after Christ. Before Christ, he refers to the Jewish people as “the circumcision” and the Gentiles as “the uncircumcision.” He, again, paints a rather bleak, but vivid picture of the place that the Gentiles (including those now part of the church in Ephesus) had been before Christ, using past tense verbs, because the Jewish people had connection to God through their ceremonies and covenants, and this left the Gentiles as “strangers to the promise” to which the Jewish people held so tightly.
Paul then describes for us of the “wall” that divided “the circumcision” from “the uncircumcision” being broken down by the sacrifice of Jesus’ life on the cross, making him “the Peace” between the two groups, that both might be reconciled to God, “killing” hostility between the two groups. So now, there is peace, no matter if they are in a near or far location to Israel, and that they can now be fellow citizens together, rather than strangers and aliens. He turns the focus back to Christ, being the cornerstone on which these two groups, once at odds and in conflict with each other, can now be built together into “a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
I don’t think being reminded of where I’ve come from will ever get old, because it deepens my appreciation of what He’s done for me. It’s true that the Bible is not a book of rules, or of good people to copy. The Bible is a story of a rescuer, of a God who stepped down from His throne to run after His people, when it cost Him everything. Paul used his letter to the Ephesians to remind us of this, to show us this. And that fills me with so much thankfulness, I just might have to get out of my chair and give a leap for joy! †
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