middlemonk

“I will never again curse the ground because of humans, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.”

— Genesis 8:21.

This might be tangential to today’s chapter, but I think a lot about promises in the Old Testament. Promises by God to us, from us to God, promises that stand forever and promises that are washed away. My first real struggle with the Bible was after reading Leviticus, which contains countless divine laws that would seem hopelessly barbaric by today’s standards (or even by the standards of Jesus in his time).

God makes a lot of promises in the Old Testament, and part of me wonders what happened to the good people who lived by those promises only to have the New Testament take them away. Were they relieved at the rejection of barbarism, or disappointed that all their good efforts went to waste?