![]() ![]() ![]() God forms a covenant with them and gives them his Law, making them a nation-his nation. Now they must learn to trust the God who saved them. Through Moses, he sends plagues on Egypt and makes a path through the Red Sea, bringing his people through to safety. RedemptionĪbraham's descendants move to Egypt and fall into slavery. Through Abraham's descendants, God will bless the world. God's promised solution begins with his call to Abraham to follow him in obedient faith. But the first humans rebel, their sin leading to suffering and death. In the beginning, God creates everything in beauty and order and peace. C-R-O-S-S: those letters spell the stages of the journey. God's arms reach from one end to the other, inviting us in through the center point, which is the Cross. It begins in blessing marred by sin and ends in greater blessing after the defeat of sin. The story begins with creation and ends with a new creation. God is there in control at the beginning and God is there in control at the end. The opening chapters are anchored in the beginning of time while the end is fixed in eternity. It has purpose and a goal that lead to blessing. One thing that's clear when you step back to see the "big picture" of the Bible is that history is not random. It's knowing God's plan and his dealings with humanity throughout history ("His-story") that forms a solid context for those individual verses and stories and gives them power in my life. When my faith is tested, I realize it's not the stories, it's the story, singular, that holds me steady. "How do you know?" Or "who's Esther?" (or Job, or David, or whoever I'm using as an example). Especially if I try to share them with an unbelieving friend. In times like this, simply quoting Bible verses and stories can feel like a crutch. The world as we know it is shaking and the questions won't stop: How can a God of love allow such tragedy? What if I'm next? In whom or what can I trust? By God's grace they were saved, but many were not. Two of my relatives stood ten feet from the suicide bomber. When the explosion rocked the Brussels airport, the reality of evil came home to me. The story of the Bible is our story, too, and each of these stages helps us get the "big picture" of our life in Christ. C.R.O.S.S.- Creation, Redemption, One nation, Separation, Salvation. "Cross" is a short word of only five letters, but break it apart and it contains the whole story of the Bible.
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