Names –
Names are important. You can define a person with a name. YHWH means God has a loving relationship with us. In the old times that’s what they would call God all the time, YHWH. The Old Testament names have different meanings. One of my favorite names is Elijah, which means, My God is the Lord. Some other names are Abraham which means “Father of Many”. Jacob means “He Deceives”. Jesus means “God Saves”. Adam, which means “Man”. Eve means “Living”. If at the end of a sentence there is a -EL that means creator and powerful king. If you think about a lot of names in the Old Testament you would find a lot of names that finish in -EL. Or you can find -EL at the beginning of peoples names too. After learning about everyone’s names you can see that what their name meant lead to what they did in the future. My name means ‘of Laurentum’. That is from the laurel leaves. A symbol that comes to mind with this theme to me is a name label. It defines who you are. I think is a perfect way to symbolize who you are.
Conflict/Doubt –
Conflict and doubt are common things. We all do it. Doubting can be a questionable thing. Is it ok to doubt? In the bible there are a lot of people that doubt. Some of them are Moses, Abraham and Thomas. So with Moses, God wanted him to go to Pharaoh. But Moses thought he was a nobody. He thought that he did not have enough power to talk to Pharaoh. Thomas doubted that God was not real. He wanted to see it to believe it. Thomas wanted to see Jesus in person and touch his hand and see the nail mark in his hand. Days later Jesus walked into the locked door and greeted them. Then Thomas believed. It is hard to think that God is really God. I think doubting things is ok. It is really hard to believe that something is true when you can’t see it. We should all bring our doubts to God. Without struggles we will not learn from our mistakes and doubts. My favorite visual for doubting/conflict is a thought bubble. It is like your doubting in your head. It’s important to me because I do that in my head a lot.
Call –
God makes promises and we respond to them. Also God calls us to do many things. Once God made a promise to Noah. The promise was that he would never make another bad storm. God told Noah to build a ark and he responded. He made an ark and filled it with animals. God called to Moses. He told him to go to Pharaoh and ask to let his people go. The Lord is preparing us for the world. It is hard to realize that he is calling us to volunteer to many things. I think he calls us in hidden ways too. When I randomly flip through my bible God always is calling me to a specific verse. When I read it, it’s like God is calling me through a verse to do something. My visual for God’s call is a telephone. A telephone just reminds me that God is calling us in many ways.
Covenant –
There are two types of covenants. One of them is conditional and the other covenant is unconditional. A conditional covenant is a if/then agreement. So if you complete this, then you will get this reward. But if they don’t complete it, the agreement does not happen. An unconditional covenant is a covenant that means, no matter what, it will happen. An unconditional covenant is a covenant that God would do. In my life I make a lot of conditional agreements. God loves us unconditionally. There is nothing I can do to make God love me less. My visual for covenants is two people shaking hands. Two people shaking hands basically reminds me that there agreeing on something. So there like agreeing on a conditional or unconditional covenant.
Sinai Law –
God made ten commandments for the Israelites. The commandments were like wedding vows between God and the Israelites. Israel was not trusting in God at the time. Plus Moses was taking so much time up in the mountains. So someone suggested that they all should build a golden calf and worship that instead because Moses was taking to long. When Moses saw what the israelites did he broke the commandment signs. Something that surprises me about this story was that the israelites waited forty days until they turned away/against God. We have a lot of golden calves in our lives. Some of them are sports, technology, money and way more. It is hard to not spend our life living on these things. The symbol that I picked for the laws is chains. I picked chains because they symbolize the law and you can’t break them. The chains hold you back like the law.
Sent to the Promise Land –
Israel was heading to the promise land. They needed to trust God in the whole journey. They needed to trust in God for food, when they were crossing the Jordan and in Jericho. They needed to keep reminding themselves that God provides. When the Israelites were crossing the Jordan I don’t know how hard it could have been. Trusting that God would stop the fast stream river is crazy. There are a lot of times where we can trust God. God is calling me to trust in him at school, at home, in struggles and in his promises. He wants us to trust in him and he trusts in us. My symbol for this theme is a cross. Just the reminder of the cross make me think about what God gave us. Reminds me of Jesus’ death on the cross.
Symbol of a Lamp –
God made a covenant with David. He said his family line would rule forever. Jesus is fulfilling. He is a Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace. There is a lot of darkness in our world. We can see darkness in poverty and in terrorism. There are many other situations where we can see a lot of darkness. We have so little light in our world. But just starting something little (a spark) will make it become a little bigger (a fire). My visual for this is a candle. This situation reminds me of a candle because the candle starts with a lot of wax. Then when the candle is burning it’s burning away all the wax (darkness).
Something is Rotten –
The Israelites were worshiping baal. So the prophet Elijah wanted to show that the Lord was YHWH. So he got to getter all who worshiped baal and told them that they were going to pray to their gods to see if they could light their animal on fire. Elijah poured water on his animal to prove his point. Everyone who worshiped baal gathered and prayed/begged to there god so much. Elijah said one simple prayer to God. After a while Elijah’s animal set on fire. Still the believers of baal did not believe in God. I can’t believe that such a great miracle God did no one ended up believing. God shows many miracles in many ways. My visual for this is a trinity sign. It basically reminds me that God is the only one. He is 3 in 1.
