It's officially 2018, which means...dun dun duuuuun...my challenge begins!
So, just a little information about what I'll be doing on my blog this year before I get started.
1) I am using the Bible Gateway app to help me keep track of what I'm supposed to read.
2) I'm using the " beginning" read through. This one goes from Genesis through to Revelation.
3) For future posts, I will refer to this challenge as RBY (or Read the Bible in a Year).
4) RBY is the abbreviation we used in school for the primary colors Red, Blue, and Yellow, and using that abbreviation just now made me laugh.
5) I will post the Book, Chapter, and Verse so that you can read along with me if you want, but I will not be copying all of the scriptures, though I may use some for illustrations in what I discuss.
6) I will be reading from the New American Standard Bible, so if I do quote any scripture, it will be taken from that version.
6) I will be reading from the New American Standard Bible, so if I do quote any scripture, it will be taken from that version.
7) I will try to make posts in the morning, but if I'm in a hurry to get to work, I may post in the afternoon or evening. I apologize in advance if you're doing the challenge with me, and this causes you to get behind. A solution would be to download the Bible Gateway app and use it to help you stay on track.
8) If you are doing the challenge with me, you don't want to, or can't download the app, and I don't post and you want to go ahead and read, a good rule would be to just read the next three to four chapters. Looking at the challenge, I've noticed that seems to be standard.
9) Feel free to post your own comments if you have something to say. Questions are welcome too.
10) I hope you enjoy going on this journey with me. I pray that each of us learns something from it.
And that's all! Wow. I can't believe I came up with ten points. I was really just going to do five!
Now, without further ado, on with the reading!
Genesis 1-3
In the beginning...
All good books have a beginning. And the Bible is no exception. Everything had a beginning. The Bible. You. Me. My cats. The whole earth. The whole universe.
I can't even imagine seeing something as big as the whole universe come into being. I mean, it amazes me every time I create something when I knit. Seeing the yarn take shape and become the project I saw in my head...it's an amazing feeling.
Can you imagine what it would be like to create something from nothing? With no tools? Only your voice.
I'm never more humbled than when I think of how my amazing God did that.
And then, the Bible says "And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light." Genesis 1:2-3
Reading that, I was reminded of how I felt before God's Spirit moved in me. I felt "formless and void" with no purpose. But then God's Spirit moved and He said "Let there be light," and there was Light in my life, and I was forever changed.
We are, after all, created in God's image, created to serve Him, and before we let God into our lives, we may be happy in some ways, but there is always something...some One missing.
God created all things.
One thing I always find interesting when I read Genesis is chapter 1:21. "And God created the great sea monsters, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind, and God saw that it was good."
I've always wondered if the sea monsters were dinosaurs, or if God created something else to roam the waters with them. I know the book of Job references the great sea monster Leviathan, but I don't know what it was. Even doing research, there wasn't anything completely conclusive. I think it was a dinosaur. Plesiosaurus maybe. There are so many questions we can't answer right now.
And then there are some we can answer, like this one.
What was the first commandment?
If you said "You shall have no other gods before me," you're right. But that's only the first of the Ten Commandments.
The very first commandment God ever gave to mankind is found in Genesis 2:16-17. "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die."
So, there we have the very first commandment. Ever.
And when I looked at it, I thought: "Die? They didn't die."
But I'm wrong. They did die. Not immediately. But once they ate the fruit, God sent them from Eden, and then their life spans, while still very long back then, had an ending because of their choice to sin.
You see, all sin leads to death (Romans 6:23, paraphrased).
And before sin, there was no death. Isn't that amazing? If they could have just kept it together and ignored the serpent...
No. I'm kidding. Even when I don't understand it, I know God always has a plan, and that His plan is best. If Adam and Eve had stayed in Eden, you and I wouldn't have the same opportunity to know God like we do now. We might not have even been born!
But speaking of that serpent...
"Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." (Genesis 3:1, emphasis mine)
Now, a lot of people say that Satan came disguised as a serpent. But that's not what my Bible says. It just says serpent. We can assume the serpent was influenced by Satan, because that's just the kind of thing Satan does: trying to make God's people fall. But nowhere in these three chapters did my Bible say that Satan talked to Eve.
But the serpent did. Can you imagine that? Eve didn't even freak out. Which tells me that it was totally normal for them to talk to the animals that God created. That just blows me away. It's absolutely amazing to think about talking to animals and having them answer you being a daily occurrence. Or at least them answering you. I talk to my cats all the time. In my defense, I'm not the only one who does it. Right?
Anyway, so the serpent talks Eve into eating the Fruit. You know the one. And Eve takes it to Adam, who eats it too.
Now, what bugs me is that some people blame Eve entirely. For the whole thing. From beginning to end. "If Eve hadn't eaten that fruit...blah blah blah." She gets all the blame. And I don't think she should. See, as far as I know with my reading (and I could be wrong, but bear with me), Eve heard about this commandment from her husband, Adam. So Eve got a second-hand commandment. But then she took the Fruit to Adam, who had gotten a first-hand commandment from God. (Genesis 2:16-17)
I can tell you from experience, that if someone tells me not to do something, I am still likely to do it, even if I try not to. But if I hear the commandment directly from God, or read it in His Word, I'm not going to do it. Eventually. I may struggle for a while. And sometimes that's normal.
So, I'm not trying to excuse Eve. What she did was wrong. I'm just saying it's not all her fault. Which is why she and Adam, and the serpent were punished.
Okay. I'll move on from that. I really didn't expect to have this much to say. Wow.
I only have two other things to say about these chapters, and then I'll stop.
First, I want to discuss how awesome it was that Adam and Eve actually got to walk in the Garden with God. Genesis 3:8: And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the Garden.
Walking with God, talking with God, these are all things we can do now too. Maybe it won't be as literal for all of us...not yet anyway, but Adam and Eve walked with Him, the disciples walked with Him, and so can we.
Actually, reading that passage again reminds me of something else Adam and Eve did wrong. Instead of just telling God what they had done, they hid from Him, as though He wouldn't find out what they had done. We do that too, sometimes. At least, I know I do. I'd rather hide what I did from God and hope He doesn't find out. But He always does. And I have found that everything is better when I just fess up and ask for His forgiveness.
Now, enough of me preaching at you. On to my actual final thing.
Something that I keep forgetting is how water worked back in the beginning.
Genesis 2:6: But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.
Did you know that until the days of The Great Flood, the earth was watered by a mist that came up from the ground? I keep forgetting. When I read the story of Noah with that knowledge in my mind, it makes more sense why everyone freaked out about the water falling from the sky. They'd never seen rain before! Can you imagine that? I'd think the world was ending if water started coming up from the earth in a mist these days.
All right. That's all. I'll stop there.
I hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts on Genesis chapters 1-3. I'm sorry it was a little disjointed. I'll keep working on these until I get them to make more sense.
Tomorrow, we are reading Genesis 4-7. I hope you read along with me!
I can't even imagine seeing something as big as the whole universe come into being. I mean, it amazes me every time I create something when I knit. Seeing the yarn take shape and become the project I saw in my head...it's an amazing feeling.
Can you imagine what it would be like to create something from nothing? With no tools? Only your voice.
I'm never more humbled than when I think of how my amazing God did that.
And then, the Bible says "And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light." Genesis 1:2-3
Reading that, I was reminded of how I felt before God's Spirit moved in me. I felt "formless and void" with no purpose. But then God's Spirit moved and He said "Let there be light," and there was Light in my life, and I was forever changed.
We are, after all, created in God's image, created to serve Him, and before we let God into our lives, we may be happy in some ways, but there is always something...some One missing.
God created all things.
One thing I always find interesting when I read Genesis is chapter 1:21. "And God created the great sea monsters, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind, and God saw that it was good."
I've always wondered if the sea monsters were dinosaurs, or if God created something else to roam the waters with them. I know the book of Job references the great sea monster Leviathan, but I don't know what it was. Even doing research, there wasn't anything completely conclusive. I think it was a dinosaur. Plesiosaurus maybe. There are so many questions we can't answer right now.
And then there are some we can answer, like this one.
What was the first commandment?
If you said "You shall have no other gods before me," you're right. But that's only the first of the Ten Commandments.
The very first commandment God ever gave to mankind is found in Genesis 2:16-17. "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die."
So, there we have the very first commandment. Ever.
And when I looked at it, I thought: "Die? They didn't die."
But I'm wrong. They did die. Not immediately. But once they ate the fruit, God sent them from Eden, and then their life spans, while still very long back then, had an ending because of their choice to sin.
You see, all sin leads to death (Romans 6:23, paraphrased).
And before sin, there was no death. Isn't that amazing? If they could have just kept it together and ignored the serpent...
No. I'm kidding. Even when I don't understand it, I know God always has a plan, and that His plan is best. If Adam and Eve had stayed in Eden, you and I wouldn't have the same opportunity to know God like we do now. We might not have even been born!
But speaking of that serpent...
"Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." (Genesis 3:1, emphasis mine)
Now, a lot of people say that Satan came disguised as a serpent. But that's not what my Bible says. It just says serpent. We can assume the serpent was influenced by Satan, because that's just the kind of thing Satan does: trying to make God's people fall. But nowhere in these three chapters did my Bible say that Satan talked to Eve.
But the serpent did. Can you imagine that? Eve didn't even freak out. Which tells me that it was totally normal for them to talk to the animals that God created. That just blows me away. It's absolutely amazing to think about talking to animals and having them answer you being a daily occurrence. Or at least them answering you. I talk to my cats all the time. In my defense, I'm not the only one who does it. Right?
Anyway, so the serpent talks Eve into eating the Fruit. You know the one. And Eve takes it to Adam, who eats it too.
Now, what bugs me is that some people blame Eve entirely. For the whole thing. From beginning to end. "If Eve hadn't eaten that fruit...blah blah blah." She gets all the blame. And I don't think she should. See, as far as I know with my reading (and I could be wrong, but bear with me), Eve heard about this commandment from her husband, Adam. So Eve got a second-hand commandment. But then she took the Fruit to Adam, who had gotten a first-hand commandment from God. (Genesis 2:16-17)
I can tell you from experience, that if someone tells me not to do something, I am still likely to do it, even if I try not to. But if I hear the commandment directly from God, or read it in His Word, I'm not going to do it. Eventually. I may struggle for a while. And sometimes that's normal.
So, I'm not trying to excuse Eve. What she did was wrong. I'm just saying it's not all her fault. Which is why she and Adam, and the serpent were punished.
Okay. I'll move on from that. I really didn't expect to have this much to say. Wow.
I only have two other things to say about these chapters, and then I'll stop.
First, I want to discuss how awesome it was that Adam and Eve actually got to walk in the Garden with God. Genesis 3:8: And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the Garden.
Walking with God, talking with God, these are all things we can do now too. Maybe it won't be as literal for all of us...not yet anyway, but Adam and Eve walked with Him, the disciples walked with Him, and so can we.
Actually, reading that passage again reminds me of something else Adam and Eve did wrong. Instead of just telling God what they had done, they hid from Him, as though He wouldn't find out what they had done. We do that too, sometimes. At least, I know I do. I'd rather hide what I did from God and hope He doesn't find out. But He always does. And I have found that everything is better when I just fess up and ask for His forgiveness.
Now, enough of me preaching at you. On to my actual final thing.
Something that I keep forgetting is how water worked back in the beginning.
Genesis 2:6: But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.
Did you know that until the days of The Great Flood, the earth was watered by a mist that came up from the ground? I keep forgetting. When I read the story of Noah with that knowledge in my mind, it makes more sense why everyone freaked out about the water falling from the sky. They'd never seen rain before! Can you imagine that? I'd think the world was ending if water started coming up from the earth in a mist these days.
All right. That's all. I'll stop there.
I hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts on Genesis chapters 1-3. I'm sorry it was a little disjointed. I'll keep working on these until I get them to make more sense.
Tomorrow, we are reading Genesis 4-7. I hope you read along with me!
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