Sermon Details
- Pastor Name: Jonathan Cornell
- Date & Time: May 11, 2014 | 10:00am
Well, we are picking up where we left off before Lent in our series of messages called Inspired: How the Story of Scripture Shapes Our Everyday Life. The Bible is this grand narrative that speaks to us in these pages, offering us wisdom and hope. Not only is it God’s story, but it’s our story, too. Here we meet the God who uniquely forms and continues to reform and redeem human creation, God’s crowning achievement.
How fitting that the Sunday when we come to the part of Scripture we call the Wisdom Literature, that it should fall on Mother’s Day. Maybe this is God’s wink.
The Wisdom Literature and Poetry of the Bible is composed of the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and Lamentations, that broad middle of your Bibles. If you were to set your Bible down on its spine and simply let it fall open, there’s a good chance what it will open to is the Poetry of Scripture. It’s no coincidence that the longest book in the entire Bible is the book of Psalms, because poetry is absolutely essential to us making it in this life. The journalist Erma Bombeck said, “There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.” Nothing captures this experience better than poetry.
Throughout the rest of the Scriptures what we read is that grand story of God’s love offered, love rejected, and the measures God went to, through his Son Jesus, to restore that relationship with us, then (as we read last week) setting us loose to do the same for others. But right in the middle, God gives us this special gift of poetry and Wisdom Literature to help us deal with the very everyday challenges of living: of Daily Life (Proverbs), of Love and Marriage (Song of Solomon), of pain and struggle and longing (Job and Psalms), and of Death and Eternity (Ecclesiastes and Lamentations). Perhaps the reason there’s so much poetry is because life itself is so varied and unpredictable. Moment by moment, our lives are changing and what the poetry of the Bible is there to do, I think, is help us savor each moment on earth more fully.
Download the entire transcript here: Psalm 139 Mother’s Day
