At the beginning of last month, Wednesday March 2 was National Read Across America Day and our literary class went outside to read for the entirety of fourth block. We all grabbed our books and spread out across the main lawn of our school campus. Some of us laid out on the dry, cool grass and some of us sat on the smooth, chill concrete sidewalk. Embracing the sunlight or the cool shade of a tree, we all got comfy to begin reading. The book I brought to read (and that I’m still reading) is called I Have Called You By Name by Jerry B. Jenkins. (I also read Tactics by Gregory Koukl, which is a very good book as well, but its not what I will be focusing on today.)
I Have Called You By Name is the novel version of the first season of the show The Chosen. This show, just to let you know, is a totally crowd-funded multi-season TV series that has its very own app (working with Angel Studios ). The show is completely free to it’s viewers due to other people’s contributions. Being fully crowd-funded, it also has absolutely no ads and is only streamed on The Chosen app, which you can get on your device or on your smart TV.
the first book is a written form of the first episode, along with the beginning of the book including the written form of the Shepard, which is a short episode that Dallas Jenkins (the front man and creator and scriptwriter for The Chosen) created for his church’s Christmas show on his friends farm. This episode is what inspired the entirety of The Chosen.
After the book tells Jesus’s birth story, it jumps to tell a piece of Mary Magdala’s story; her childhood and her father reminding her the words of Isaiah 43:1 “… fear not, for i have redeemed you: i have called you by name, your are mine. Then the book goes to show us her as an adult, struggling with the consequences of her being possessed by demons. The next section tells us about the Pharisee Nicodemus being stopped on the road by the praetor of Capernaum, Quintus. they talk of who they serve and mention unpaid taxes, a tense conversation that ends with Quintus making a confusing fish analogy.
the story moves on to introduce us to Matthew, a Jewish tax collector who is methodically getting ready to go to work. then next few chapters bounce between Matthew’s experience as a hated Jew and Nicodemus experience of being a praised rabbi that is told to go help the Romains.
after that, we get to see a fistfight. the fisherman brothers, Simon and Andrew — with Simon in the center of the group of men, fighting one of his wife’s brothers Jehoshaphat. just as Simon is about to win, Jehoshaphat’s brother Abrahim beats Simon and truly wins the fight.
