Before God showed us Himself in physical form, He manifested Himself to us by words, and His words were inscribed on tablets and stones and compiled all together to give us the Scriptures. The greatest gift of God! This week’s article will take us on a journey to find what seems to be unfolded through the Scriptures.
Our level of maturity increases throughout the high school years, as we start high school we know that we are Christian, because maybe “we were born into it”. We know that we go to Liturgy on Sunday and Youth Friday nights, but maybe our young age missed a very intimate relationship with the Bible, a relationship that is much deeper than weekly daily blessings/Bible readings to impress the Sunday School servants. The first question we may have asked as we embarked on forming a deeper bond with the Bible could have been “Why does God sound so harsh in the Old Testament while the Only Begotten Son in the New Testament is seen as an incredibly compassionate person who is tender and soft-spoken?” God’s glory was seen in the Old Testament as He gave commandments just to basically keep the people of Israel alive. God spoke to the Israelites as parents speak to their toddler, being good parents, they don’t give their child a piece of steak right away, but rather wait until he is weaned, then start feeding him baby food until he is mature enough to receive more solid food, little by little. In the book On the Holy Spirit by Saint Basil the Great, he says that God did not want to send us His only Begotten Son right away because we were not accustomed to beholding this kind of light all at once; so He sent us prophets and men that were types of Christ (resembling the image of the Savior) in order to pave the way for the Christ to come and for us to be able to grasp who He is. Little by little. The Old Testament is the way to the story of the greatest love, and the New Testament is a declaration for the Crucified, Resurrected, and Ascended Lord.
In one of the previous articles, it was mentioned that we often seek self-validation from people or grades and this type of identity is proven or disproven every time the person receives a compliment or a good grade. Isn’t it amazing that God sees our personalities and deals with them accordingly? With no doubt, there is no type of personality that is not presented in the Bible, there is no type of personality that God does not deal with, patiently and compassionately. If I am a sinful woman, I read about a sinful woman that laid her life down at the feet of our Lord and gave up all she had. If I am of a low-class job, I read about God promising a simple fisherman that he will be turned into a fisher of men. If I need God to give me proof of His presence, I see Gideon who God gave more than one sign proving that He was the One Gideon was talking to. Although God has no need of us, He created us, and runs after us, and gives us a multitude of ways to see His works. The irony of it all is that each one of us is able to find Himself in the Bible. If I seek words of affirmation, the Bible is full of words that prove that I am the daughter or son of the King! The Bible is then our self-identity so that we may refrain from having too many identity crises.
“It is not possible, I say not possible, ever to exhaust the mind of the Scriptures. It is a well which has no bottom” (Saint John Chrysostom)