Let’s be honest, sometimes the Bible isn’t always that easy to understand.

When you read the Old Testament and then turn ahead to the New it sometimes seems hard to see exactly why things happened the way they did and why God in the Old Testament seems to be so different to God in the New Testament.  It can sometimes seem a bit like this picture – it’s difficult to see how all the lines and paths exactly meet up…

So far this summer, I’ve had my head into the book of Lamentations.  Yeah, not always top of the Bible reading charts but I’ve persevered and managed to get through it with the aid of some good study notes.   At first glance the book of Lamentations seems to be all depression & gloom. But, as my notes pointed out, ‘the deeper the gloom, the more brightly the light shines’. As you read a book like Lamentations you confront the horror & terror of God’s wrath/judgement but alongside that you see the wonder of his mercy, and we can then see Jesus more clearly as the One who ultimately rescues us from that terror.

The Truth is, the God we read about in the NT is the same God with a new way.  That way was and is Jesus.  And when we look to Him and think of how we can be rescued from the doom and gloom that encloses us as people who are exposed to a world of so much evil, hurt, pain and sin, then in that gloom the more brightly the light shines.

I’m seeing again in a very fresh way how amazing God’s Word is.  Amazing and perfect.  And when you look closely enough into the Old stories, told so vividly and sometimes so graphically in a book like Lamentations, then if you spend long enough there, looking and listening, you will be pointed to the great Redeemer and Saviour:  Jesus Christ. It’s all about Him.

And in Him is where life and freedom are found.  Go and discover more of this for yourself…