The first 17 books of the Bible, are pure history. Sequential. And when I read them, I see Jesus over and over again. There is a “thing” called typology. Where various figures in the Old Testament are types of Christ. Joseph’s life story foreshadowed Jesus life.
Here are some pages I found about this… <here>
Steven > Types of Christ. Absolutely mind-blowing. And I see the distinction between that and A) false messiahs, and 😎 delusional beings with messiah complexes (those with mental illnesses and disturbed thoughts)
I love reading a good book! Well done foreshadowing is truly incredible!
You’ve read Genesis. In the beginning there. God stripped off their fig leaves, and gave them animal skins. It is there that I see Christ foreshadowed!
Love was when God became a man, yes he sent his son, is only son, to die on Calvary. <Here> is a YouTube of that
He is our covering, our clothes! It is in Christ that we are able to enter into the presence of a Holy God!
God’s holiness is his absolute attribute! It is self awareness when he said to Moses, “don’t come any closer! And take off your shoes for you are on Holy ground!”
Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
Sin entered creation, and the solution to that sin that would separate us forever from the Holy God was God himself, incarnate in Jesus Christ!
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
That is God himself alluding to Christ Jesus, who would be born of a virgin woman….
And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.
I love poetry also! And this is the absolute poetic!
But!!! When you realize it’s history itself, real things happening in real time, God himself ! His own and ink was the peoples of the earth and their lives that told and foretold his story of his love for us.
Restoration of the garden scene there in Genesis is seen in the Love between God and man, and between one another.
I wonder! If Steven could marvel at the art of it all!
Like when I read The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock! I knew I was in the presence of greatness! I read it without understanding a word! But I still knew I’d just read something truly profound! T S Eliot! Only God could have created and inspired such a poet you see!
So I read it again and again, over and over, and then… still more perceiving it rather than understanding it, that final line:
“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
And I burst into tears, a deep well of tears burst open from within me, and I wept and felt the meaning, still not even able to reiterate just why even now, years later, over 20 years later!
I heard from someone that it is actually about his own love story with God.
Oh my!
If you’ve never heard of that poem, we can still again be friends, in time, I’ll be able to bear the news in hope that you will read it now… but I have a feeling that you already know it…
A type is not a complete picture, but a foreshadowing right? Well, I’ve seen in scripture a type of Steven Brunton maybe?
The Bible says we were all outsiders ! Without hope and without God in the world! But we have been brought in! Brought near by the blood of Christ!
Exodus 3, don’t come any closer Moses! Jesus is nit yet incarnate! You need to be in Christ.
Interestingly, an alien and a stranger are spoken of in The Law! In Genesis and Exodus there is mention of treating strangers well.
In Acts 10 there was an outsider, an alien… in the Bible there emerges the chosen race, Israel, whom God set apart for himself, to bring Jesus Christ into the world through Israel, and thereby bring all the rest of his creation near!
In Acts 10 a gentile, the first one I believe, was brought near! Read the story!
God called a Jew! Peter the apostle! But he prepared that Jew for what he was called to do, that’s there also in Acts 10!
The whole of the Bible leads up to that crescendo! To that climactic peak! Paul calls it the mystery that has been hidden in plain sight since the garden of Eden!
Perceive it Steven, feel it, know it, seek it…
God himself is drawing you nearer, and he has sent his own ones to testify about him! It’s no strange coincidence that there are many that are being used by him to declare this news to you! That’s the way he does things, so that he is glorified, he is the one who is seen though unseen!
Authors, great authors, will tell you, if you look for it, about the genius of the message that emerged from them! It is both “other than” and from within in them!
Anne Lamott in “Bird by Bird” quotes Arthur Miller… but it’ll take a while to find it… it’s just not my own idea ok? I didn’t invent it… but I believe it!
“Your unconscious can’t work when you are breathing down its neck. You’ll sit there going, ‘Are you done in there yet, are you done in there yet?’ But it is trying to tell you nicely, ‘Shut up and go away’.” —
Anne Lamott
But this is the gyst> to write fiction, tell the truth! Begin by getting to know the characters in your story, character development! Put the characters together in scenario after scenario and the story will tell itself! The plot will come out it!
I think Miller said something like any book that has a predetermined plot is a flop already!
The story idea, the characters that play in that story… cause the plot to come into being!
It’s like a child within the womb! We know about the egg and sperm! The bodies that merge and the life that is begun in that precious place ! But the wonder of it is a gift only a woman can ever know! That this child grew within me, and now is outside of me, and is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones!
Yet a writer can nearly touch that in writing his/her book!
You, Steven are a book He’s writing!
You have been waiting to be born, in the womb of time and space, brought to the punch line! The peak of the point of the book itself, Steven meets Christ Jesus!
And what is your greatness? What great deed, what culminating thing will occcur?
Mother Theresa said, “love the one next to you!”
Love thy neighbour! That was her “ambition”!
Forgive me Steven, but you do inspire me!
The Cremation of Sam McGee is another favourite poem of mine, <here> is a personal story about that.
Here’s another example of writing that was inspired by a song. If you can download it somehow, I read it while listening to that song turned up loud… you’d be listening to it the way I wrote it… er uhm… which is to say I wrote it while listening to this song turned up loud with headphones on.
Here’s a list of some of my own favourites (of my own stuff that is)
I have a directory, and have it such for a few years now, called BOOK ATTEMPTS. I took all of those and compiled them into one cleverly named file, I wonder if you could guess its name LOL <HERE> it is. I DO NOT expect you to read it. I also do not prohibit you from reading it. I do not even know if you make it into that story as yet. Look for “Stranger in The Doctor’s Office” on about page 45 of 208. The way that particular piece came about is that I’d listened to my audio book of Bird By Bird several times, and had been following her advice. I kept a little notebook where I wrote down writing ideas. I set aside some private time to write (Saturday at 5:oo am) and then I sat down to write, and looked through my ideas to see which one I felt like trying. I then followed her rules. Things like, “tell the truth” which is a strange one considering she was talking about fiction. But its seen in the descriptions of what I saw in my mind’s eye as I looked around that waiting room… I also didn’t worry about “editing” I just got it all down… so there’s lots of juvenile, childish, and outlandish things there. She also discourages pat phrases and old saws… instead put what you want to express into your own words, she says, so I did that and more. After about 2 hours, my wife arrived in the room where I had been writing and so the bubble popped. I closed the little scrap book I was writing with. (I think that was my idea… I have come to hate writing when spell check and pop-ups of waiting emails can interrupt the flow… and there’s something about the pen, paper and physical motion of writing that’s elusively hard to describe) I then asked her if she’s like to hear what I wrote? and to my surprise, she not only listened, but didn’t interrupt with, “how many pages is this going to be?” but the most surprising is… and if you read it you’ll realize, that though I’d been quite “playful” in the writing of it, as I was reading it outloud to her, I burst into uncontrollable sobbing about 6 pages in… and suddenly I realized who those two men in the room were, and they’d come up out of my unconscious to confront me with some unfinished unattended to business.
Running Down Vimy 