Once upon a time, there was a girl who wanted to be able to pick out themes and words in the Bible to draw out deeper meaning. It seemed to be an impossibility. Despite studying the Bible regularly, the words all blurred together and nothing deeper came out of her time in the Word.
That person was me.
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I don’t think I realized that that depth of study that I longed for started happening until this morning. I sat in a Bible study with several women and we start every week with a summary of what we’ve been learning. With a well publicized mass shooting within an hour from my home, I really dug in. “I don’t feel safe even going to the grocery store,” I prayed. “How is this ok?” And then God reminded me of the tabernacle (codified in Exodus 25, but referenced earlier). This tent traveled with Israel and symbolized God’s presence among His people. He lived there, in the tabernacle. The Hebrew word translated as tabernacle also means house, tent, dwelling place. Moses sings praise to God after the amazing events of the escape from Egypt (Ex 15). He sings of God leading them to His mountain where He resides, and then ten chapters later, Moses receives the blueprints for the tabernacle. This represents God leading Israel and dwelling among them significantly before the time the temple was built under the rein of Solomon.
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After figuring all this out about the tabernacle, I was reminded of John 15 when Jesus says multiple times “abide in me.” A couple of years ago I dug deep into that word because it’s used A LOT in John 15. The tabernacle imagery I saw in my personal study in the Old Testament led me to the New Testament. God chose to dwell among us in the tabernacle and then in the corporeal form of Jesus – fully human, fully divine. Don’t try to make it make sense. Our brains have a difficult task with that (and the doctrine of the Trinity… analogies often used have questionable theology … but I digress), but He dwelt among humans for much of history (look at the Garden of Eden? God walked among the Garden with Man and Woman.)
Remember that girl that wanted to find a bigger depth to the Bible? She found it. She found such a deep richness and challenges to her status quo. She found words with deeper meaning. She never stopped wanting to learn.
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Is there an area of Bible study you struggle with? Reach out. I’m here and would love to help you get started. Maybe it’s reading through a book of the Bible together with guided questions? Maybe it’s holding you accountable? Whatever it is, reach out, and let’s get connected.
Bible study is fun, y’all.
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