That was the question I was asking myself as I finished reading through the stories of the plagues over Egypt in Exodus. The first plague turned the Nile to blood. The last plague was the bloodshed of Egyptians and their livestock, and the protective barrier for the people of God was the blood of a lamb on their doorposts. It's a bloody book, probably R rated for violent graphics.
It all goes back to Eden. Remember the serpent? Remember him convincing Adam and Eve to eat the fruit? Remember what God said? The sin of humans caused death to enter the picture. Death. Bloodshed? I wonder if Adam and Eve had even seen blood? They would surely see it now. A whole book later and an entire river was blood. God was right. Death, blood, ugliness, and bleakness had entered the picture because of our sin.
But that is not the end of the story. God always flips the script. It's blood that saves the Hebrews from death in Exodus, it's a sign on their doorpost that they belong to God. And that's what they call in the literary world as 'foreshadowing.' God turned the whole thing around. He's like that. Our sin brought death into the world, and God would use death to make everything right again. The blood of the lambs on the doorpost of the Hebrews was only a snapshot of what God was going to do in Jesus. The blood shed by Jesus would bring forgiveness with it. The death of the Savior would bring life again. If you are like me, you've made your fair share of mistakes, but God has a way of turning our greatest shortcomings and turning them upside down for our good. We brought death and blood into the world, and, yet, the death and blood of Jesus saved us. And his resurrection beat them once and for all.
The blood tells a story. It's a story of redemption. A story of things turning around. A story of how something ugly can become so beautiful. There's a story like that in you if you will let Him turn it around.
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