I've been thinking a lot lately about metaphors and similes. (That's what authors do when they're supposed to be paying close attention to what others are saying to them, and what earns us the reputation of not listening. We do listen, but sometimes not to the voices outside our heads.)You may remember from your high school English classes that both similes and metaphors compare two concepts. A simile usually employs a word such as "like" or "as" (as in, "Her crochet hook dipped like a frantic, starving duck into the tangled lake of thread in her lap"); whereas a metaphor makes the comparison with the "like" or "as" not stated, but implied.
Apparently these literary devices are something God really likes, the way His mind works. His Holy Spirit inspired the writers of the Bible to use them often. Almost all the parables Jesus told were similes: The kingdom of God is like yeast, for instance.
But similes are more difficult for me. God is love. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Maybe the challenge of these literary devices is why they delight us so. Recently I read (actually listened to the audio of) a book called I Was Amelia Earhart by Jane Mendelsohn. Since most people know of Amelia Earhart and her mysterious and unsolved last flight, many expectations come along with her book. Is it an autobiography? If so, from what point of her life? Why the "was"?
So imagine the drama, the anticipation, when the first sentence of the book is, "The sky is flesh."
That compelling, jarring metaphor sets the tone for the rest of this well-written and provocative book.
How about you? What is the most memorable metaphor or simile you have read recently?
