Suprising finds in the Old Testament

I have never been much for the Old Testament. I always thought there were a few interesting stories in those books but they were hard to find amidst some pretty boring and hard to understand stuff. But lately, (like the last year or so) I have found some pretty amazing things in the Old Testament, it kind of surprised me that there were some pretty profound and inspirational stories and messages written in the scriptures before Matthew, Mark, Luke and John came around. I read a few books* (fiction) that made me take a second look at some of these stories and definitely gave me a new appreciation for the people and prophets who lived before Christ.

Anyway today in Sacrament meeting a reference was made to a phrase of scripture that is pretty commonly used but I wasn't familiar with the context of the scripture. So I came home and looked it up. It is Proverbs 31:28. I have always heard "they will rise up and call her blessed", but hadn't really thought to much about who would be rising up and who they would be talking about and why. The whole chapter caught me off guard and hit me hard. I don't think I have ever read it before. Well actually I know I have- when I was reading the Old Testament for seminary, but while my eyes went over all the words in those books my mind was too busy thinking of other things to really pay any attention to what I was reading. Any way two things hit me really hard. Number one is I should be rising up and calling my Mom blessed because she is everything and more the chapter talks about. The chapter is clearly describing my mother, and how I got to be so blessed to be born to her I will never know. The second thing is boy do I have a long way to go to get to a point where my kids could say that. Even then they would probably need to stay seated and using the word "blessed" would be a stretch. But it does give me something to work on. And work on it I will.


*The books I read were the Gods and Kings series, The Women of Genesis series, Stone Tables, and Joseph and Aseneth (by Alex Chappell). I have a hard time keeping track of authors but I am sure you can google it if you are interested.