The Land Slows Us Down

It’s been right here all along—the land teaching us how to un-hurry our hurry-sick hearts. Land speaks stunning truths through Scripture. The Hebrew word for land is eretz. It is the fifth most frequently used noun in the Hebrew Bible, after the Hebrew words for LORD, son, God, and king.

The land is more than a backdrop for the stories told in the Bible. Rather, the land is a leading character in the magnificent biblical narrative, from the very beginning when God made life in a garden. The lessons Jesus drew from the land were clear to first-century agrarian culture, and we don’t…