Bible Reading Plan

I joined up last week with my friend Marcy to keep up with a one-year chronological Bible reading plan. The plan involved two readings per day but since it had already started I was ~1 week behind. I’ve been needing something like this because my Bible readings have been ad-hoc of late. Her announcement in church at the right time… Anyway, as you can imagine I went through the first week more than doubling up per day plus I have to keep up with the current week. I haven’t gotten caught up yet mainly because my brain tend to take a break from reading much of anything after Wednesdays it just shifts into weekend/give me a break now please mode. I’m aiming to catch up by tomorrow though and will blog the second week sometime tomorrow or Monday. Anyway, in the first set of readings I went from Genesis 1-22 and Matthew 6:19-34. Marcy has posted a pretty good summary of the major points so I won’t go into all of it just major things that stuck out to me.

• Genesis 1-3: The creation story & the fall: The whole creation story has always fascinated me. I liken it to a master artist painting a masterpiece except that he knows exactly what he’s painting as he’s doing it and having fun. We have this repeating phrase God saw that it was good after he created light, the land, the earth, the seas… as if he’s going wow that’s cool! He seems quite taken with the creation as it unfolds. In (v.24-25) he said “let us bring forth living creatures after their kind…” in vs 26 he says something quite different ‘let us make man in our image, according to our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds… and over all the earth…” Besides the fact that I always ask who is he talking to who is us? when I read that passage, God seems to make a distinction between man and animals here. Animals after their kind, Man [woman] in His image and likeness. The other thing that I find interesting is that at the end of chapter 1 God gives man and woman plants and fruits to eat. To the beasts he gives plants. I’m thinking hmmph I guess God’s original plan was for us to be Vegans? In chapter 2 you have God resting from his work and the creation story being repeated again except this time there is more detail on the creation of Eve. It is important to note that Eve was the crescendo of his creation the final touch on the canvas so to speak. In verse 18 God makes an interesting remark “it is not good for the man to be alone.” Perhaps this is why guys who are married tend to live longer than the ones who don’t. Anyway God said he will make him a helper suitable for him. In vs. 24 the foundation for marriage is set fort. In Genesis 3 the fall takes place and at the end Adam & Eve gets kicked out of the Garden of Eden and the trouble for all sons and daughters of Adam & Eve begins. The thing that struck me about the Fall is that Adam was right there when the snake was tempting Eve and he didn’t do anything about it, he was passive. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if Adam did not eat of the tree. Would God have exiled Eve and made Adam another one or what? At the end God also did not want them to eat from the tree of life after they had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil I’ve heard a few ideas on this but wonder what the consequence would have been if they had in fact eaten from this tree. Does anyone else out there get a kick out of all these important trees that were in the garden or is it just me. Imagine a garden full of trees that cured diseases and other ills. I find this whole garden fascinating and have wondered where this thing is and if you happen upon it if you can see the cherubim and flaming sword. I’ve got more than a few questions to ask on this matter eternity side.

• Genesis 4-6: Descendants of Adam & Eve- These stories are quite familiar to me and I didn’t have much of a problem with God rejecting Cain’s offering and accepting Abel’s it seems to me that Cain just didn’t give God his best he did the minimum while Abel gave God his firstlings of his flocks suggesting that he gave God the best. He was sincere. Cain’s later actions also tells me that his heart was not in the right place. He killed his brother in jealous anger and when God asked him what he had done he got annoyed and asked God if he was his brother’s keeper. The thing that I’ve always mused on here is vs. 14 “Behold, You have driven me this day from the face of the ground; and from Your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” Who are these people that Cain & God is referring to and later on who is this wife of Cain? Did Cain marry his sister? Did God create some other folks and scatter them throughout the Earth after Adam & Eve? Are all these direct descendants of Adam & Eve? I guess the long life makes sense then… You can imagine the other questions I have here. Chapter 5 talks about the descendants of Adam and reads like a typical genealogical record not much to fuss over there except for those folks with long life. Methuselah was 969 years when he died (wow that’s almost 1000 years). What did these folks eat back in those days? Chapter 5 ends with Noah (the guy who built the ark). Chapter 6 opens up with a line in verse 2 that is quite odd to me “the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose”. Who are these? Then later on in verse 4 it talks about “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Besides the fact that this sounds like something out of LOTR (the Numenoreans) I’m wondering who these sons of God are and these Nephilim. Some folks have suggested that the sons of God refers to angels but you can understand this boggles the mind and lead to more questions and wonderings about this whole thing. maybe aliens aren’t so far fetched after all

• Genesis 7-9- The Flood & the Rainbow- Here we have the familiar story of God wiping out every living creature man, woman, beast and child upon the Earth (except for those in the ark) via flood (it rained for 150 days). I’ve always wondered what the people around Noah said to him when he was building the ark, and imagined the ridicule that he and his family must have endured during that time. The water eventually subsided and those in the ark came out. Interesting what God says to Noah about food… something changed from the story of Adam & Eve 3 “Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. 4 “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. Does this means its OK to eat meat now or what? Anyway, towards the end of the chapter God establishes a covenant with Noah and every living creature on the earth never to destroy the earth by flood again. The sign of His promise, a rainbow. I’ll like to dwell on the rainbow for a moment I find it fascinating that where I live the rainbow means something else entirely. There are many people with rainbows on their cars only it does not mean what God intended at all. I find this quite ironic.

• Genesis 10-12- The Descendants of Noah- The story of Abraham and Sarah is told here I don’t have much to comment on that one at all. Also there is the tower of Babel story which is a bit of interest to me since it seems that this has contributed to the creation of the many cultures and languages that exists today. I also found it fascinating that God did this on purpose and that his remark was “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. My mind begins to wonder here about the motivation and push us modern day folks seem to have of late for one universal language, governmental structure and such.

• Genesis 13-22- The rest of this section to chapter 32 has some interesting stories of Abraham & Sarah having a child in their old age (seems no big deal to me on account that Adam had Seth at 130 I’m assuming Eve was around the same age). What have always gotten me about this section is that Abraham was always hiding the fact that Sarah was his wife and getting the guys that would take her as wife in trouble with God. He did this a number of times and I found this quite annoying. Melchizedek is mentioned in Chapter 14 the importance being that he was both King & Priest.. a foreshadowing of Jesus. The Destruction of Sodom is presented in chapter 19. I’ve always wondered why Lot lived in that place if the outcry against it was so great that it went up to God. Then I wonder about where I live and what the outcry to God is regarding this City. I didn’t have much of an issue with Abraham willing to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham had heard so much from God and walked with him for so long that he figured God would provide a way out. The good news is that God did just that and Abraham’s willingness to offer God his only son was credited to him as righteousness. God later made a covenant with him in 16-18 of Chapter 22.

• Matthew 1-6: I always appreciated the book of Matthew perhaps because it is a very practical book. The first chapter lays out the genealogy of Jesus then moves on to his birth and the response of the Magi & Herod’s response. I thought it interesting that this beautiful story of the birth of Christ and the response of the magi is contrasted by such horrors as Herod’s actions in Chapter 2:16 and the eventual flight of Joseph and Mary to Nazareth. Chapter 3-4 is basically Jesus overcoming temptation (wish I can remember how he dealt with this in my own dealing with temptation), his baptism and the beginning of his ministry including the calling of his disciples. I thought it interesting that in 4:21 James and John just up and left their father Zebedee in the boat and followed Jesus. I’ve wondered would I have done the same if I was in that boat. Chapter 5 gives the famous sermon on the mount and in chapter 6 we are taught how to pray. I’ll end with that here:• “Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

[posted with ecto]