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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

Ezra picks up after Israel has been away from home for a long time. The people were taken into exile by Babylon, and now a new empire, Persia, is in charge. For the first time in decades, some of the Israelites are allowed to return to Jerusalem. They are stepping back into a place most of them have never seen and trying to rebuild a life they only know through stories. What Ezra is About Ezra is about coming home and trying to start again. It focuses on two main things: rebu

Chronicles sits in an unusual place. It covers a lot of the same ground as Samuel and Kings, but it isn’t trying to replace them. It’s written much later, after the people return from exile, to help them make sense of their past and reconnect with who they were supposed to be. Kings ends with collapse. Chronicles retells the story in a way that helps people rebuild. It focuses less on political drama and more on identity, worship, and the parts of the story that showed Israel

When Deuteronomy ended, Moses handed leadership to Joshua. The people entered the promised land. Judges came and went. Samuel anointed Saul, then David, then Solomon. By the time Kings begins, Israel has a king, a temple, and something that finally looks like stability. But it does not last. These two books cover roughly four hundred years of history. They read like a long, honest record of people trying to hold things together and often failing. Kings is not a neat story. It

The second big question my son asked me in the car that day was this one. Right after, “How am I supposed to believe this,” he followed it with, “Does God really know what I’m thinking all the time?” I remember sitting there in the front seat thinking, I have no idea how to explain any of this. And if I can’t explain it to my own kid, what does that say about where I am in my own faith? Without realizing until Tommy actually verbalized it, I've been wondering the same thing f

By the time you reach 1 and 2 Samuel, the Bible shifts into a new phase. The wilderness years are over. The period of judges is ending. Israel is becoming something more organized than a loose group of tribes. They want a king. They want structure. They want to feel secure. These two books show how that desire plays out with the main figures being Samuel and then Saul and David, and finally Solomon. These stories are not exactly polished or inspirational. Some aren't moral. T

After the chaos of Judges, where the country keeps falling apart and rebuilding again, the story shifts to something much smaller. No battles. No kings. No national crises. Just a family trying to figure out life after things go wrong. Ruth is a simple story about loss, loyalty, and starting over. It is personal, almost ordinary, which is partly what makes it so easy to read. It shows that the Bible is not just sweeping drama all the time. It also includes regular people tryi

Judges is a wild one. It's gritty, messy, surprising, confusing at times, and very human. It does not read like a clean, inspiring story. It reads like real life gone off the rails. If Joshua shows what happens when people follow God with courage, Judges shows what happens when they forget everything they learned. It is not a book about heroes. It is a book about flawed people in a chaotic time who keep drifting away from God and then crying out when the consequences hit. It

Deuteronomy ends with a huge emotional shift. Moses dies. A whole generation passes away. The people are standing at the edge of the land they were supposed to enter forty years earlier. Now the leadership passes to Joshua. He is not Moses. He is not the one who confronted Pharaoh or climbed Mount Sinai or broke the tablets or spoke with God as a friend. He is the next guy. The guy stepping into a role that probably felt too big, too heavy and too legendary to ever fill. Josh

If Exodus is the jailbreak, Leviticus is the rulebook, and Numbers is the wandering, then Deuteronomy is the big family meeting before everything changes. This is Moses’ final message to a people who are standing on the edge of the Promised Land. He knows he will not be going with them. He knows the next generation barely remembers Egypt. And he knows how quickly people forget who they are when life moves forward. So he gathers everyone and gives a long, heartfelt, sometimes

I wish this was a question I asked only when I was younger, but the truth is I still ask it now. There have been jobs I didn’t go for. Conversations I avoided. Risks I backed away from. Even whole seasons of my life where I sat on the sidelines because I was afraid of getting it wrong. And most of the time, the fear didn’t feel like panic or terror. It was just quiet self-doubt. Overthinking. As the voice that says, “What if you’re not ready? Or, “What if you fail?” Or, “What

If Genesis is dramatic and Exodus is cinematic, Numbers is…familiar. Not because of the ancient setting, but because it feels like real life. It is a story of people who have every reason to trust God and still doubt Him constantly. People who want certainty, who get impatient, who panic when things get hard, who grumble even when they’re being protected and provided for. Numbers is basically the story of what happens between being rescued and being ready . In the middle — t

If we are being honest, this is the part of the Bible where most people check out. The sacrifices, the rules, the talk about mildew, skin diseases, offerings, food restrictions, and cleanliness laws. It can feel strange and disconnected from life today. But once you understand why  Leviticus exists, it can be somewhat easier to digest. It becomes less like an ancient rulebook and more like a window into how a rescued people learned to live close to a holy God. It also becomes

This question is the reason this blog exists. How am I supposed to believe this? It is the question my son asked me in the car after church. It is the question I’ve asked myself quietly for most of my life. It is the question that sits underneath many conversations people have about faith. Because the Bible does not start small. It begins with creation from nothing. A talking serpent that represents evil. A flood that wipes the world clean. A tower that collapses because no o