Spirituality in the Messyness

I'm still making my way slowly through the Old Testament, savouring the content and seriously reflecting on it. A question I ask myself, particularly when reading some of the more mundane chapters, is “why is that included?” Sometimes I am perplexed, as I have been reading Chapters 34 and 35 of Genesis. Reflecting over a few days on this I realised something; I am constantly looking for the deep spiritual meaning when I should be looking from perhaps a more secular perspective. This realisation has been a breath of fresh air. I have come to understand that some of this content is there to show what the real life was like behind Bible heavyweights such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and also where it fitted in to the world at that time. The fact that we read of these people having children with their servants or servants of their wives, or we read of the ‘rape’ of Dinah and Rueben sleeping with Jacob’s concubine, or the fact that Jacob’s even had concubines we see real life; messy, sometimes awful, and often deviant. It makes all these stories real, it paints a picture of life at that time, and puts it all in context and by doing this, by being able to understand this in my 21st century, western, context first, it is only then the deeply spiritual meaning behind these stories is illuminated; in the midst of all this life is God in all his power and glory working with real human beings, getting them to recognise and acknowledge Him as the one true God (and in this they have a choice), and directing them on the path of righteousness, often blessing them with earthly things in the process towards their salvation and the salvation of us all.

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