Welcome to the Bible Reading Challenge!

12/1/2013

Happy 62nd Anniversary to Advent and Welcome to the 2013-14 Bible Reading Challenge!

We are reading individually, but in community, following a prescribed schedule of daily readings. We will take several two-week "tours" of the Bible, beginning today with an introduction to Abraham. Each tour begins on a Sunday and each day's reading is one chapter in length.

Please use this blog to share your impressions, your questions, your inspirations as you read. Susan and I will try to check in regularly to keep the conversation moving along!

Read the good Book lately?

**Marianne

22 Comments

Ingrid

12/1/2013 03:05:46 pm

It's interesting to me that in chapter 18 of Genesis, important revelations---that Sarah will bear a child, that the city of Sodom and Gomorrah may be swept away---take place within a context of desert hospitality. Maybe hospitality to the stranger also leads to revelations today.

Susan

12/2/2013 12:44:53 am

What struck me in Genesis 18 was the way both Sarah and Abraham reacted to God's message. Sarah did not believe, even to the point of laughing; Abraham debated with God. And God did not turn away from them. That comment raises a question about what might happen if they turned away from God.

Gerry

12/2/2013 02:58:25 am

In both Chapter 18 and Chapter 12, I was struck with how "human" Abraham seemed--not a larger-than-life hero, but a real person who was curious enough to test God's sense of justice and so scared that he was willing to allow his wife to become a one of Pharaoh's wives. (I have to wonder what is behind that story.) God also seems personable--not the awesome deity who melts mountains and in whose presence people cannot live.

PAA

12/2/2013 06:21:53 am

Yes, comes as visible visitor who eats and talks companionably, engages in back and forth conversation.

Gerry

12/3/2013 03:18:23 am

Intra-family feuds are from the beginning! My study Bible contrasts Lot and Abram. Lot grabs the better appearing piece of real estate instead of deferring to his uncle to make the choice; he is "rewarded" with Sodom and Gomorrah. Abram seems wise and magnanimous, and he is granted numberless descendents and all the land he can see. But we are reminded that the Canaanites and the Perizzites still lived there, a warning of problems yet to come. Is this a suggestion that on earth, even when God fulfills His promises, things will never be "perfect"?

PAA

12/3/2013 01:20:45 pm

Abraham comes off as trusting God's promises here, but in Egypt he orders his wife into bigamy to save himself, apparently not trusting God's promise that he will yet have children (and therefore will have to live.)

Nancy

12/4/2013 03:54:48 am

I found this disturbing and wondered what kind of man would allow another man to take his wife as self-protection. I failed to see his "faith" in that act.

Susan

12/3/2013 11:38:58 pm

It sounds easy: "Abram went down to Egypt..." But he was rich so took all his family and cows and gold, and tents and furnishings, but he also had to have servants and so on. And it had to have been a walking pace. And it was not a distance such as, say, from Arlington to Leesburg.

Susan

12/3/2013 11:47:44 pm

And he needed protection--chapter 14 says he had three hundred eighteen trained men, which does not seem like much of an army but all them added to the rest! And I don't know what else, wandering around in that vast desert, and actually arriving someplace. And always placing faith in an unseen leader, more or less always. Then there are supplies, and where do they get water for all these people and animals?
I'm not drawing any conclusions, only trying to look behind the text.

Gerry

12/4/2013 02:24:31 am

Susan,
It is hard to imagine how they lived. (I have difficulty imagining how civil and revolutionary war soldiers lived and traveled, too.) Our world is so different in so many ways! Yet, at the same time, I feel a kinship with Abraham. He questions God's promises. He wants reassurance. One thing Abraham doesn't seem to do is ask, "Why me, God? Why did you pick me to be so blessed?" That's a question that I ask, particularly at Christmas time.

Wendell Anderson

12/5/2013 08:58:53 am

It is interesting how God keeps making the promise to Abraham over and over. The first day's reading is probably the one that is most familiar but not the first time God has promised Abrham many descendants.

Susan

12/6/2013 01:42:51 am

I appreciate Wendall's comment that God repeats his promise over and over to Abraham. Does he do so for others, for me? How can we know what the promise for us, for me, might be?

And another question, from chapter 19. The destruction of Sodom is understood as God's punishment. Who or what was the authority to do so? Is it useful, or justified, for people today to declare God's punishment?

I am not at all sure that questions such as these have answers. Only more questions.

Gerry

12/10/2013 01:43:31 am

Just caught up on my reading. The stories of Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Esau are interesting, but seem to have more cultural significance than spiritual insight. I don't think we are supposed to emulate their lying, deceit, parental favoritism,quarreling, etc. God's decision to bless them seems rather arbitrary,. The stories describe a dog-eat-dog world rather than one where God's truth and justice control history. God's blessing is not love, joy or peace, but long life, many kids, servants, and lots of animals.

Ingrid

12/11/2013 01:04:29 pm

This is kind of a page-turner. And I agree that God's decision about whom to bless seems rather arbitrary.

Marianne Hetzer

12/14/2013 03:36:35 am

Sadly, this was my main take-away from this section, too. And I wish I weren't so "down" on the family of Abraham at this point! Abraham, Isaac and Jacob seem sincere in their allegiance to God, but their everyday actions are anything but Jesus-like. And they married women capable of hard-core scheming and trickery!

Gerry

12/12/2013 03:35:22 am

It is fun re-reading these stories. (I'm not sure why we were to skip some of the chapters, except to compress the readings.) One theme is that God blesses unlikely people. Jacob and Rachael are both second children. There seems to be an odd sense of justice and irony. God open's Leah's womb because Jacob likes Rachel better. Rachel gets the mandrake, but Leah has another child.

Marianne

12/14/2013 03:38:02 am

I'm not able to skip, actually! I've read all of the "missing" chapters in between, just for flow!

Susan M

12/12/2013 09:38:39 am

I found it interesting that both Abraham and Isaac lied about their wives being their sisters. I also found it strange that Isaac actually believed sheep skin was his son's hairy arm.

It's quite evident with the people in these stories that God continues to work his master plan through our sin and brokenness.

Ingrid

12/12/2013 03:13:47 pm

That is actually a comforting thought.

Nancy

12/16/2013 01:12:15 am

Gerry

12/13/2013 02:35:07 am

I love the story of Jacob at Peniel (in Chapter 32). Jacob is honored apparently because he has "striven with God and with humans, and has prevailed." I confess, I often feel that I am striving with God, asking him why thing are the way they are, doubting his "steadfast love" when there is so much suffering and injustice. The mysterious being (Is it God or an angel?) says Jacob has "prevailed," but it's not clear to me how. Jacob's whole life--and the story of Israel, whom he represents--is one of repeated struggles. I find that comforting since my own faith journey often feels more a struggle than time spent enjoying the promised land of milk and honey. The Jacob story says to me, "It's o.k. to struggle. God can work with strugglers and questioners."

Susan

12/14/2013 05:03:16 am

Interesting to note how much more comes out of a more targeted reading. It isn't as though we did not already know the stories!

This is why it really disturbed me to run into high school students who refused to re-read a passage

Welcome to the Bible Reading Challenge!

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