For years I have followed a Bible reading plan that lures me into the nooks and crannies of Scripture. Without it, I’d be tempted to stick to the well-lit spaces: Ephesians, Luke, the Gospels. With it, I find myself greeting the day with a reading from Numbers, or forced to reckon with the strangeness of Daniel. I want the easily understood—Judges refuses to be that. But my reading plan takes me through Judges anyway. And through these lesser known, unsafe stories, I learn to love new facets of the Lord: I see his steadfastness in a new light, or come to understand a little more the way he works in lives of his people.
The best story Bibles dive into some of these nooks and crannies. But I haven’t seen many picture books that move beyond the top five Bible stories: Genesis, Noah, Daniel in the lion’s den, the Christmas and Easter stories.
N. D. Wilson (author of 100 Cupboards) plunges off the well-trodden path of children’s Bible stories and writes about Abram, not yet Abraham. This isn’t the story of Abraham’s journey to fatherhood, but of Abram’s journey to faith. It’s a small book filled with battle and striving, and through it Wilson brings to life passages of Scripture often overlooked by adults and unfamiliar to children. Forest Dickison’s illustrations convey a sense of movements, and his paintings pair with Wilson’s language to craft a story of how the Lord works in a human heart.
The Sword of Abram is a part of N. D. Wilson’s series, The Old Stories. I have yet to read the other two books in the series, but have high hopes for them, given the favorable review of In the Time of Noah on Aslan’s Library. Have you read any of the other books? What did you think?
The Sword of Abram
N.D. Wilson, Forest Dickison (2014)
