This week we continued on our journey through Genesis. We covered a lot of material, so I want to give a brief synopsis for those of you who want to stay on track, but haven’t had the chance to read the most recent posts: We first addressed the creation of Seth in Genesis 4:25 in …
Continue reading “What Every Christian Should Know About Genesis 4-8”
Yesterday we discussed The Flood narrative in Genesis 6-8. Toward the end I named a pattern that we see over and over again throughout the Bible: God reconciling our relationship with Him, us breaking that reconciled relationship, and then God having to fix whatever we broke to reconcile us all over again. We will see …
Last year my church began reevaluating the images we used to decorate the children’s department. I remember specifically debating whether illustrations of Noah’s Ark should remain on the walls. It’s an easy Bible story to use as decoration — there’s a boat, water, and animals — all very fun images for children’s ministry. Reading the …
Continue reading “Sinners In The Hands Of A Heartbroken God”
Do you remember those Staples commercials that came out a few years ago with the “Easy” button? Someone would be struggling with a task, then hit a big red “Easy” button, and miraculously the problem would be solved. Yesterday while I waited in line at a grocery store, the credit card machine malfunctioned for the …
My mom and I love watching sad movies together, and Steel Magnolias is one of our favorites. Toward the end of the movie, Sally Fields gives one of the most heartbreaking and powerful speeches about the loss of her daughter. It brings us to heavy tears every time. As I read the text for today, …
Continue reading “Grief, Loss, And The “Replacement” Of Abel”
This week we covered a lot of material from the first four chapters of Genesis. Because these chapters are so compact, I want to do a quick summary to highlight the main points that we covered. I also included a lexicon for those who want to keep track of the Hebrew words we’ve been learning. In our …
Continue reading “Recap: What Every Christian Should Know About Genesis 1-4”
You know that moment when you’re reading the Bible, and understanding most of what’s going on, and then you hit a long list of names that seems to never end? It can feel frustrating and confusing, I know. The Bible has a number of genealogies that seem to run on for pages and pages, leaving us wondering, …
Genesis 4 could be a Lifetime movie. Often we refer to that chapter as “The Story of Cain and Abel.” But if we look at the broader narrative, we see a whole family experiencing jealousy, guilt, murder, grief, loss, and estrangement. If we read the story from the perspective of Cain (which is easy, since he’s …
Yesterday we began exploring Genesis 3, and looked closely at how curses factored into The Fall. Genesis 3 is such a complex text that we didn’t have a chance to get into the details of the punishments that God dealt to the man and the woman for eating from the tree. We have used these punishments to …
It’s not easy being human. We face challenges every day, and have to use our resiliency and tenacity to figure out how we’re going to get through them. And while we’re striving to be great partners, children, parents, workers, siblings, and citizens, it can be easy to look back and ask, “Why?” Why did that happen? Why this …
Pastor Melissa 