Commandments of the Bible Blog…
Each week I’ll be attempting to create a blog entry for the previous week’s reading (in this case the previous two weeks, since this is my first blog entry).
It won’t be an exhaustive examination of all the reading, just a few insights and thoughts to get the conversation going. I’d like to set up a few rules to keep us on track. Nothing oppressive, just some guidelines to keep us together.
- As you leave comments, please focus them first on the topic I’ve introduced that week.
- After commenting on that particular week’s topic, feel free to add your own insights and/or questions about anything else from that week’s reading. (This might be hard for those of you who have read ahead, but please try to limit yourselves to the text of the week).
And that’s it! Pretty simple, so here we go…
Week 2 (&1) – Bible Blog! (Genesis 1 – 42)
Oh my gosh! Did you have any idea that the Bible was filled with so many dysfunctional families?!? You thought yours was the only one? Let’s see…
The 1st Couple: Adam & Eve… sold us down a river of sin! (Gen 3)
The first brothers: Cain & Abel… God tells Cain, “Either you master sin or sin will master you!” In the very next verse Cain kills Abel! (Gen 4:7-8 from Dave’s Paraphrase – 😉 By the way, Abel means “brevity”. I guess that fits. In fact all their names had meanings.
And then there were Eight: Noah & his family… God rescues 8 people from a world-wide flood. In gratitude Noah plants a vineyard, gets drunk, and curses a son (Gen 9:25), but at least we get to eat meat! (Gen 9:3).
Too bad that flood didn’t stop sin…
Babbling fools build a tower… With one language the people begin to settle down and build a great city and a tower to reach the heavens so that they can, “make a name” for themselves (Gen 11:4)… Hmmm… seems to be in direct violation of God’s command to Adam and Eve to multiply and subdue the earth (Gen 2).
Oh well, that’s how we got all these languages… and we’ve been babbling ever since.
Kissing cousins… So now we have Abram… his brother Nahor married their neice, Milkah (daughter of their dead brother Haran – Gen 11:27-29). Actually Abram married his half-sister Sarai (Gen 20:12). Well, we actually see this a Lot here in the beginning.
The Father of Faith… but, “Abram believed the LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness!” (Gen 15:6 & Romans 4:1-3, and elsewhere)
Fast Forward to Jacob and his 12 Sons… the “dreamer” Joseph doesn’t know to keep his mouth shut and isn’t discerning enough to see his brothers really don’t like him. One fine day they sell him into slavery and tell Jacob that he’s been killed by a wild animal! (Gen 37). In fact it was Judah’s idea to sell him into slavery.
Jesus is the, “Lion of the Tribe of THIS GUY?!?!”… Seemingly out of nowhere we get this horrid, twisted story of the absolute immorality of Judah (Gen 38). (Actually there’s a really good reason why this seeming interruption was included here.)
Finally some hope… Joseph under challenging temptation and frustration lives a life of integrity (answered by injustice) in Egypt and rises to 2nd in command of the land! (Gen 39-41)
Judah redeemed?… (disclaimer: I’m cheating a little here to step into today’s reading…) Judah offers to take the place of Benjamin as a slave in Egypt to spare his father the heartbreak of losing another son! (Gen 44:18-34)
So here’s the question…
Even in the face of such dysfunction we see signs of redemption and/or redemptive qualities. How does this impact your thoughts about the dysfunctional families and/or world that we come from?
Let’s hear from ya… 🙂
(well… at least when I learn how to turn the comments section on. Help?!)