Thank God for the Essenes

They may have been religious fanatics. They may have lived in a dry, desolate land, perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking an inhospitable sea. But they produced one of the greatest treasures in the world and stored it, ironically, in jars of clay.

The Essenes, in their cloistered existence, were writers - scribes really - who painstakingly copied laws, histories, and scriptures. Thanks to their mission to preserve the written word of God and their care in secreting the writings away, we now have the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of 900 documents transcribed around the time of Christ.

Prophecies, laws, psalms, and histories, even a treasure map, are part of this collection. And now a tiny piece of the collection is on public display in Seattle. 10 manuscripts, 4 of them never seen by the public before, stand in hermetically sealed, dimly lit cases.

As I ran my fingertips over the plastic case and gazed at the fine, perfect handwriting of Psalm 119... as I leaned in for a closer look at the fragments of Genesis 1 and Hosea... I was struck by two things. One, the Dead Sea Scrolls are a treasure, a tangible proof of the accuracy of canonized scripture. And two, the Word of God has been written on my heart and the hearts of all his people. While it also is carried in jars of clay, it will never fade or fragment or deteriorate. It does not break down in light. Rather, it radiates light.
*photo from whyfiles.org