Kelsey Garegnani- Chiastic Structure

To go off my last blog, I want to revisit the idea of suffering and its importance in true success and joy. I think that this idea can be understood well in the concept of Chiastic structure. This is a literary structure, used often in the Bible, is used in order to show the importance of events. It is characterized by its use of opposites in an AB…BA pattern. Chi is Greek letter X which depicts how this structure works. The one line goes one direction and the other goes opposite to it as being juxtaposition. As I mentioned the main idea behind this devise is to show the importance of a event. If we apply this concept to Suffering, we can see how by taking a drastic beginning, there is an emphasis on the successful end. More specifically, let us say that the top left corner is our own prideful strength (A), but through submission we give that up to God, we end on the bottom right corner in weakness (B), but then from our weakness (B) we find our dependence on God who then in turn makes us strong by Him and in His strength. In all though I think that it is through our weakness that God more fully emphasizes his power and we can see that as demonstrated through a literary structure. Therefore, we can also see how looking at patterns and fictional stories we can better understand the workings of God and apply them then to our own world and experiences.