Every four years, the Old Testament reasserts itself in our collective consciousness as the Sunday School cycle continues its endless rotation. The introduction of this ancient document as the text for Sunday School lessons is sometimes met with emotions such as fear and frustration on the part of the teachers and boredom and apathy on the part of students.
Then, there are those few seeming odd-balls who say things like “I just love the Old Testament!” The rest of us, still struggling to grasp the deeper meaning which we know is buried down there, wonder what allowed these individuals to transcend the superficial oddities that distract us from the spiritual messages we wish we could see.
Or, maybe this description doesn’t apply to you. Maybe you have always loved the absolute faith of Abraham, the submissiveness of Job, or the Christ symbolism in the ancient Hebrew rituals. Maybe you understand the Savior’s admonition to the Nephites to search the dense words of the longest book of Old Testament prophecy, “for great are the words of Isaiah” (3 Nephi 23:1).
Maybe you have, at times in your life, been blessed to be able to see past the cultural differences of a society thousands of years old, and you have seen the hand of God working with them line upon line, in the ways that were best suited to their experience and level of understanding.
If you have been touched by a story in the Old Testament, please share your testimony with us here (in the comments below). We can all benefit from each other’s understanding of this great book, which details the spiritual foundations of revealed religion on our planet.
