So, One of the things that I assume about you and I think I rightly assume this about you is that

you are an excellent interpreter of stories and of culture. It's a skill that we don't really know that we have. We don't notice it developing,

but we're around stories all the time. Advertisements are stories, sports, our stories,

politics, the stories, our friendships and relationships, school,

institution, whatever, it's all stories, and then of course you get the overt

stories and books, movies, things like that.

The thing that we practice maybe as much as anything in life is interpreting, is reading

what a thing means.

And I would submit to you, my friend, that even if you've never sat down with a sheet of paper and a pen and then thought about your favorite story and written down all of the prominent themes, I bet that even if you've never done that if you were to go and pause this right

now and get a pen and shoot a paper you could write down quickly five themes

from your favorite story ever and you would be spot on. You could

write an academic paper practically about that

off the cuff because the themes come through and you internalized it and that's part of why you love and

resonate with that story so much.

Every book in the Bible works the same way.

There's the overt stuff in these books of the Bible,

the nuts and bolts, the guts of it,

and like then so and so did this,

and then they did that,

and these are the events,

and these people fought and argued,

whatever it is. But then there's the thematic stuff and

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