Struggling through these lengthy technical passages early in my Christian walk when I did the "Bible in a year" study, and of the old Testament details of God's specific design for the first Ark of the Covenant (that big scary box from the 1st Indiana Jones flick), almost ended my reading of Exodus (if not the whole Old Testament).
Why did I need to know all these details?
Why was God sooooo specific?
Why the use of all these precious materials?
What the heck is a cubit?
These unanswered questions stuck with me, hanging out in the back of this condemned warehouse I call a brain, somewhere between "What will we look like in heaven" and "What's up with these ear hairs".Then someone said Ark of the New Covenant to me, and it all made complete sense, and I saw the reason for the extensive blueprint of the Ark and the Tabernacle. God was giving us a glimpse in to how special he would make Mary. The first Ark housed the Ten Commandments, but the new Ark would house and give birth to the Word made flesh. I had heard Catholic apologetics ask the rhetorical question "if you were God, how would you make your own mother", and Exodus gives us a bit of that answer. She would be made special, of precious materials, and with pain staking details.
So, to all my wonderful non-Catholic friends who have skipped over parts of Exodus, because they appeared to have little meaning, I suggest you give it another try , pondering if maybe the ol' musical Monk might be onto somethin'.
Funny thing is, Catholic and reformers having been saying the same things for hundreds of years.
"I believe... he [Jesus Christ] was born of the blessed Virgin, who, as well after as she brought him forth, continued a pure and unspotted virgin."
John Wesley, Anglican priest and founder of the Methodists
No comments:
Post a Comment