My Picture Bible

The Word for today:
Leviticus 4:1-6:7

My brother and I learned to read before we went to school, and here’s how…

Every week, my Dad left “the funny papers” (the comics section from the Sunday newspaper) on our kitchen table. Then throughout the week, as my brother and I ate breakfast, we would follow the exploits of Charlie Brown and Dennis the Menace and Beetle Bailey and Prince Valiant, before we could understand a single syllable of what was written.

My Dad hoped that those pictures would prime the pump, so to speak. And they sure did. Then, on Saturday morning, he would point to an arrangement of letters that looked like this:

d-o-g

Then he would point to the pictures of Snoopy and Ruff.

Without even knowing that we were reading, we began to understand that d-o-g meant the idea of an animal in general and that S-n-o-o-p-y and R-u-f-f meant particular, actual, real d-o-g-s, belonging to C-h-a-r-l-i-e and D-e-n-n-i-s, respectively!

And that’s exactly how God our Father teaches us the Word of God. In Leviticus (and throughout the Old Testament) he puts the pictures on the table, so to speak. Then, when we come to arrangements of letters that look like these--

s-i-n,
or s-a-c-r-i-f-i-c-e,
or r-e-d-e-m-p-t-i-o-n,
or g-r-a-c-e,

--we “get it” because we’ve already seen what those words mean.

But, best of all, when those words turns into flesh, when r-e-d-e-m-p-t-i-o-n turns into the Redeemer, we know what “Jesus” means.

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