Ann Madsen – Relatable Passages and Metaphors

Kelsey Wilding:  So, when you teach students are there like passages, that are ‘aha’ moments for them?

Ann Madsen:  Oh yes.

Kelsey Wilding: Do you have one that really hits hard?

Ann Madsen: Well, it’s different for different students. They come with their own needs and they go away, and I say to them, that metaphor may say something totally different to you than it does to the person sitting next to you, because of your life experience. If you’ve seen someone die, then death has a whole different meaning to you than it does to someone who’s never seen anyone die before. Or if you’ve seen a birth and Isaiah uses the birth metaphor again and again. I think of him as a wonderful husband and father because he really knows what it is to bear a child. All the different stages of labor are mentioned by Isaiah and every time I read one I think, the boys in the class, the young men in the class, will not understand this, but someday the girls will, and the women will, they’ll know what he’s talking about. So, I try to point it out so that when they reach that stage, and often I have a young father who’s just seen his wife give birth, comment on the images that Isaiah uses, as birth metaphors, and it never fails. He will say I had no idea that it was like that, I didn’t know it was that way. And I fill in because I’ve had three children. So, I want them to know, I want them to understand what Isaiah is getting at with that metaphor. He says, for instance, ‘shall I bring,’ this is God speaking, ‘shall I bring to the birth and then not birth to child.’ I’m not quoting exactly, but that’s the idea. Well that’s a great dangerous moment. If the baby cannot get through the birth canal, both the baby and the mother are likely to die. So, if you know that, then what he’s talking about is saying to you, why would I bring you through life and not help you get to eternal life. That’s what I want to do. Anyway, there are a lot of metaphors like that. They all come rushing into my head when I tell you that one.