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For most of my life, I believed in God the same way you believe in gravity. I assumed He was real, but I didn’t really know what that meant. I never slowed down long enough to look in the mirror and ask what I actually believed or why. Then one day a couple months ago, on the drive home from church, my ten-year-old son asked a question I was not ready for. “Dad, how am I supposed to believe this?” He was talking about God. About the idea that Someone could create the universe

Mark is the shortest, fastest moving and is likely the earliest Gospel written. Its simplicity, speed, and lack of explanation make it feel raw and immediate. For readers who want to encounter Jesus quickly, without long introductions or theological framing, Mark offers the most direct entry point. He is constantly moving, teaching, healing, confronting, and being misunderstood. The book feels urgent with very little pause. What kind of book is this? Mark is a narrative accou

The Old Testament ends with Israel back in its land, but under foreign rule, with unresolved promises and a long memory of warnings, exile, and return. The prophets speak of restoration and hope, but history does not pause to explain how or when it will happen. Between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, several centuries pass. Political powers change. Empires rise and fall. Jewish life continues under foreign authority. The questions raised by the Law

The books commonly called the “Minor Prophets” come at the end of the Old Testament. The word minor does not mean less important. It simply means shorter. There are twelve of them, and together they cover a long stretch of time. Some speak before Israel and Judah collapse. Others speak during exile. A few speak after people return and try to rebuild. They can feel overwhelming because they are dense, intense, and unfamiliar. (Not to mention the names…my kids are partial to Ha

Daniel closes out the Major Prophets, but it reads differently from the books that come before it. Instead of speeches directed at Israel, Daniel is set almost entirely outside the land, during exile. The stories unfold inside foreign empires, primarily Babylon, and later under Persian rule. What kind of book is this? Daniel contains: • Narrative stories about Jewish exiles serving in foreign governments • Court politics and public tests of loyalty • Visions filled with sy

Jerusalem has fallen. The temple has been destroyed. Large portions of the population have been taken into exile. Ezekiel’s voice comes from within the exile, not from the city itself. What kind of book is this? Ezekiel is a prophetic book made up of visions, symbolic actions, speeches, and poetic imagery. It is not written as a continuous narrative. The book moves between: Vision reports Messages addressed to Israel Oracles against surrounding nations Reflections on responsi

Lamentations follows directly after Jeremiah in both content and historical setting. Where Jeremiah records warnings leading up to Jerusalem’s fall, Lamentations comes after the destruction has already happened. The city has been conquered. The temple has been destroyed. The population has been killed, displaced, or exiled. This book doesn’t explain those events. It reacts to them. What kind of book is this? Lamentations is a collection of poetic laments. A lament is a formal

Jeremiah is the second of the Major Prophets that follows the final years of the Kingdom of Judah as it moves toward collapse. The book records warnings delivered over decades, alongside the personal cost of delivering them. Much of Jeremiah takes place as events are unfolding, not after they are resolved. What kind of book is this? Jeremiah is a prophetic book made up of speeches, warnings, symbolic actions, prayers, personal reflections, and historical narrative. It is not

Isaiah is the first of the Major Prophets and one of the longest and most complex books in the Hebrew Bible. I'll try to simplify. It sits at the intersection of history, warning, poetry, and hope for the future. Much of the language is vivid and memorable, which is part of why Isaiah is quoted so often later in the Bible, including in the New Testament. What kind of book is this? Isaiah is a prophetic book made up of speeches, poems, visions, and symbolic actions. It is not

The books we just finished, Job through Song of Songs, step away from history and focus inward. They don’t move the timeline forward. They capture how people think, pray, question, love, work, and wrestle with life. They reflect more on personal experience and much less on public events. The next section shifts outward again. The prophetic books are not philosophical reflections or collections of sayings. They are anchored in history. Kings are in power. Nations are rising an

The first time I read through Song of Songs, or also commonly known as Song of Solomon, I did a double take. It’s a series of poems exchanged between two lovers and it’s explicitly romantic and physical. Bordering on erotic? There is no storyline that advances history. No laws. No wise sayings. No philosophical argument. No prayers directed toward God. Isn't this the Bible? What kind of book is this? Song of Songs is a collection of love poetry. The poems describe attraction,

The first time I read Ecclesiastes, it barely registered. That was about a year and a half ago, when I was trying to figure out my way through the Bible. I remember thinking it felt contradictory, and kinda bleak. I don’t think I finished it. Whatever the case, it didn't have an effect. I moved on. Then a couple months ago, I was pulled back to it. I reconnected with a college buddy I hadn’t spoken to in over 25 years. As he was telling me about his church near Franklin, Tenn

Ecclesiastes is part of the Wisdom and Poetry books, but it does not function like most of the others. There is no collection of prayers, no set of short proverbs, and no narrative storyline. Instead, Ecclesiastes is a single extended reflection spoken almost entirely by one voice. What kind of book is this? Ecclesiastes is a philosophical reflection written in poetic prose. It examines ordinary parts of life such as work, pleasure, success, wisdom, time, wealth, legacy, and

Similar to Psalms, there is no storyline here. No narrative arc. No crisis to resolve. Proverbs is a collection of short sayings meant to be remembered, repeated, and shared. What kind of book is this? Proverbs is a collection of short statements about how life tends to work. They are not promises, laws or guarantees. They’re observations about cause and effect, character and consequence, wisdom and foolishness. Many are only a sentence long. Some are blunt. Some are ironic.

Psalms is different from everything we’ve read so far. There is no storyline. No timeline. No beginning-to-end arc. Instead, Psalms is a collection. One hundred and fifty individual pieces written over centuries by different people in very different circumstances. The historical books showed us what happened, while Psalms is a kind of record of what people said while it was happening. What kind of book is this? Psalms is a collection of prayers, songs, and poems directed towa

What kind of book is this? Job is not a historical account in the same way Kings or Chronicles is. It’s a wisdom book written mostly in poetry, framed by a short narrative opening and closing. It deals directly with suffering, loss, and the question that follows almost immediately when things go wrong: why is this happening? The book does not set out to answer that question clearly. It shows what it looks like to wrestle with it. How it’s structured Job has three main parts.

Up to this point, most of what we’ve read has been narrative. Joshua through Esther covers long stretches of history. Leaders rise, nations split, cities fall, people return, and the story keeps moving forward in time. The next set of books is different. These are usually called the Wisdom and Poetry books. Instead of telling you what happened next, they zoom in on what it felt like to live through real life with God in the background. Success, loss, fear, anger, suffering, d

There’s a pattern throughout the historical books that feels uncomfortably familiar. People hope for something. Work for something. Picture a future. And then life breaks in a different direction. And maybe that’s why these books have resonated with me the way they have. Because that’s been my life, too. When I was a kid, I knew what I wanted: professional baseball. I wanted to be Cal Ripken. Forget that I ended up 5'10" and not 6'4" and with a much worse arm, range and bat s

Esther is one of the rare books in the Bible where the action takes place outside Israel entirely. The people are living in Persia, far from home, long after the exile. There is no king of Israel, no temple leadership, no prophet delivering speeches. It is a story about ordinary people living under a powerful empire, trying to keep their identity, and facing danger they did not ask for. And the most interesting part: God is never mentioned by name in this entire book. Not onc

Ezra and Nehemiah are two parts of the same historical timeframe. Ezra records the return from exile and the rebuilding of the temple. Nehemiah picks up the story about thirteen years later, when the city itself still has no walls and no real protection. This book is grounded in actual events during the Persian Empire. The people are back in their land, but the city is still exposed and vulnerable. Nehemiah becomes the person who organizes the rebuild. What Nehemiah is About