A friend recently told me that the “Old Testament” of the Bible doesn’t really pertain to our modern times, so we need to stay in the New Testament. When she said this, I was right in the middle of reading the Old Testament book of Job.

There’s an old ‘country’ expression that describes the experience of an intense or traumatic life event that leaves us forever changed. “Being pulled through the knothole,” means going through a situation so exceptionally intense the beliefs and assumptions we had before we were “pulled through the knothole” no longer exist when we get to the other side of said knothole. Sometimes this can result in a major life transformation, or it could be our understanding was expanded to see something in a completely different way. This is how I feel every time I read the book of Job (and many of the other OT books) – pulled through a knothole.

We see that in the blink of an eye, Job loses his family, possessions, suffers unthinkable sickness, and then his ‘friends’ show up telling him this calamity is punishment for some sin in his life.

All of this leads to the question, “What in the world is going on here?” American theologian John Piper once wrote: “To see what is going on we have to look outside the world. This world never answers the great questions of life. The answer…is found in heaven.”

These tragedies that happen to us on earth might not make any sense; and we can diligently seek answers but may not find them. It is crucial to know that there are heavenly transactions occurring—which we are not even aware of but affect our lives—that are of eternal importance.

John Piper goes on to say, “When your calamity comes, may the Lord give you the grace to affirm the sovereignty of God, let your tears flow freely, and let God himself be your treasure and your joy.”

Each time I read the Old Testament, these books show me that everything points to Jesus being my Savior, that time is irrelevant, and each book teaches me to trust God in a more profound and meaningful way, no matter the circumstances. My friend was proven wrong.