Yesterday was the first day of the 2021 Wimbledon Championships, one of the four Grand Slams of tennis! Nice to see fans in the stands! Anyone who knows me knows that I love to play tennis and love watching the Grand Slams. So, I turned on the TV to catch some of the action and Andy Murray was playing Nikoloz Basilashvili. Murray was up two sets to love (2-0) and they were tied in the third set 5-5 with Basilashvili serving. So, Murray was looking real good before his hometown crowd, or was he? I heard the commentators expressing concern, not for Basilashvili, but for Murray. I exclaimed “what!” Murray was up two sets and they were on serve in the third! Why the concern for Murray? So I rewound the action to see how the third set got to five-all. And there it was! Murray was actually up 5-0 in the third! I went back to live coverage and, having won seven games in a row, Basilashvili won the third set 7-5! By going back to what happened before I turned the TV on, I understood why the commentators were saying what they were saying and understood the concern for Murray’s performance in the third set.

That got me thinking about a book I am reading: The Bible Jesus Read by Philip Yancey. In the book, Yancey discusses the importance of reading the Old Testament (making up, as he points out, three-fourths of the Bible). He explains that while there are things in the Old Testament that some might consider troublesome and perhaps even contrary to how we think as Christians, it is by reading and understanding the Old Testament that one can better understand and appreciate the New Testament. By reading the Old Testament, one can better understand why New Testament writers wrote what they wrote.

So, just as I had to go back to the first ten games of the third set between Murray and Basilashvili to understand why the commentators were concerned for Murray, and why they were saying what they were saying — which upon first hearing made no sense to me — Yancey is saying that one needs to read the Old Testament to understand the New Testament and to better understand God, no matter how challenging the task. And why not? After all, the Old Testament is the Bible Jesus read!