There’s a lot to talk about in those very first stories. I am far less interested in the science of them than the blank space of humanness in them.

There’s a lot to talk about in those very first stories. I am far less interested in the science of them than the blank space of humanness in them.

Noah’s story is so much darker than we give it credit for. If anybody has cause for trying to forget their life, it is Noah. Imagine watching God wipe out your world but keep you alive. Of course he ends up passed out naked in a field.

This story is usually told as a story about Abe’s faithfulness and his willingness to lose his son if it’s what God wants. But I've never heard anything about what Isaac might have lost that day. From any angle, this story cuts.

In Exodus 2, when the mother of Moses has to defy the orders of the king to hide her son, and then send him down the river, she has no idea how the rest of the story goes. She doesn’t know she might get him back momentarily, or that he’ll end up changing the world, or that the seas will someday obey him. She just lets him go down the river.

Rahab’s story is first told in Joshua 2 when she helps spies survey the land they will eventually conquer. It’s retold in Hebrews 11 as an act of great faith. I’m sure “the prostitute” is still attached to her name to remind readers how God redeems all kind of folk. But I wish other titles could be attached to her name too.

Luke 2 says there was a woman who spent day and night in the temple, for her whole life, just watching and waiting for anything that looked new. And then finally, she got to see.

When Ruth’s husband dies, she clings to her mother-in-law and makes a grand promise about staying by her side. It’s a promise we understand. And a promise that’s harder than we know to keep.

Bathsheba has often been treated as little more than a prop in the narrative of David’s temptation, downfall, and renewal. Surely she had a story of her own to hold and tell, even if she was only one who would listen.

This piece is inspired by my Shetland Sheepdog who has taught me a great deal about what it must mean to feel responsible for other creatures.

Mark’s account of the life of Jesus is the most caffeinated version. It’s worth slowing down the moment when he invited fishermen to let go even though it was against all of their training.

The old law called for both participants in adultery to face a trial by peers with stones in their hands. In John 8, a text with its own complicated story, we meet a woman who stands trial alone, at least for the time being. Nothing stays old.

John 20