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| The image is entitled "Esau Selling His Birthright" |
I stopped and really looked at it. For a while.
What struck me was how real Jacob and Esau look in this image. How young. How much they look like perfectly normal teenage boys, albeit dressed a bit...er...not modern.
It made me stop and think for a bit about the names and personalities we hear and read about in the Bible.
It's hard to put names to faces, and personalities to names, and emotion to personalities. We read names like "Moses," "Jacob," Isaiah," Baruch," and (at least for me), they don;t really resonate as real people. It's hard to identify with someone's struggle when the very concept of that person is so abstract.
Even with more modern figures, like George Washington, it's hard to identify with a posed portrait. It's even harder when there is nothing.
So that's why images like that ^ are so great - it depicts real people in a very raw, human way. I mean, they even look some people I know. They look like they're brothers - their facial expressions are just amazing.
Anyway, the whole thing has got me really thinking about the people in the Bible. The humans who deal with stuff like the flu, sunburns, washing dishes, puberty, the whole nine yards of the human experience. What little is sometimes said about the people overshadows the fact that they are really, truly, people that God chose to work with and through.
I've been trying to focus on the people behind the Bible ever since seeing this image. It's a fascinating way to view the scriptures, and one I plan to continue to work on
Give it a shot - imagine a character from the Bible as a living, breathing person sitting next to you.
Even better, imagine them young and full of life, like Jacob and Esau here - because they all were at one point.
It made me stop and think for a bit about the names and personalities we hear and read about in the Bible.
It's hard to put names to faces, and personalities to names, and emotion to personalities. We read names like "Moses," "Jacob," Isaiah," Baruch," and (at least for me), they don;t really resonate as real people. It's hard to identify with someone's struggle when the very concept of that person is so abstract.
Even with more modern figures, like George Washington, it's hard to identify with a posed portrait. It's even harder when there is nothing.
So that's why images like that ^ are so great - it depicts real people in a very raw, human way. I mean, they even look some people I know. They look like they're brothers - their facial expressions are just amazing.
Anyway, the whole thing has got me really thinking about the people in the Bible. The humans who deal with stuff like the flu, sunburns, washing dishes, puberty, the whole nine yards of the human experience. What little is sometimes said about the people overshadows the fact that they are really, truly, people that God chose to work with and through.
I've been trying to focus on the people behind the Bible ever since seeing this image. It's a fascinating way to view the scriptures, and one I plan to continue to work on
Give it a shot - imagine a character from the Bible as a living, breathing person sitting next to you.
Even better, imagine them young and full of life, like Jacob and Esau here - because they all were at one point.
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