Introduction

Introduction

Who endowed the heart with wisdom, or gave understanding to the mind? (Job 38.36, NIV 1984)

This is a book about relationships, particularly as recounted in the Scriptures. Using both Old and New Testament characters, some less well remembered than others, we will challenge ourselves to find, in the lives of people who lived long ago, reflections of our own relationships in all their fragility. Through these often larger than life stories, our own predicaments may be revealed in a clearer light, and we may be surprised into fresh ways of understanding. It is a truism that we learn more from our failures than our successes, so I make no apology for the emphasis in the book on the dysfunctional. Through the lives of some of the characters who fill the pages of our Scriptures, we see the common pattern of wilderness, death and resurrection repeated over and over again, and each daily reflection studies one or other of this threefold pattern...