Week 1: January 2 - 5
I made my goal on January 1st. I was psyched to get started on the new year, get a full 365 days of Bible-reading in 2013, all that garbage. But I waited until after midnight on New Years Day to download the app and subscribe to the plan - so it has me starting on the 2nd (and it won't let me go back a day to change it). This is gonna bug me all year.
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I skimmed the Creation story and Jesus's genealogy/birth. Anytime we had to recite verses in RA's or Sunday School, I'd always knock out the creation story because:
1. As I've said, I've tried for a very long time to accomplish this goal and you always start with Genesis.
2. You always start the kids on Genesis! That's been drilled into my head since before my head plates grew together and solidified!
And I skipped the Christmas story because it was just Christmas and my parents made me go to both Sunday morning church (and hear the Christmas story) and Christmas Eve church (and hear the Christmas story). I know the Christmas story. Next!
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As an addictions counselor, Noah's got a special place in my heart. He's definitely not the first fudge-up we meet in the book (thanks EVE!), but he is the first named drunk. I also think it's interesting how, of all the people God deemed righteous and worth saving (and worth re-propagating the human race), he picked Noah the drunk! And let's be real, you would have to be an alcoholic to build a giant boat for somewhere-like 120 years when you'd never seen an ocean before, right?
I also started thinking that maybe Noah wasn't a drunk before God wiped out humanity, but after. Considering we don't actually hear of Noah imbibing until he plants a vineyard in the soggy ground, this could be a possibility. You gotta think that it'd be pretty lonely being one of a handful of people left on the earth. Throughout my life, it's been pointed out that God uses losers and fudge-ups to do great things and Noah is the first guy we meet that embodies that.
Last thing about Noah and probably the most important read-between-the-lines detail in the Bible - Noah killed the dinosaurs. Follow me on this! Noah and his kin were on the ark for a full year, accompanied by TWO of each animal. The Bible's been pretty detailed up until this point about the logistics of the ark, so you'd think they might include a food plan, right? I don't see one. So logic would dictate that those folks got hungry at some point - and if you have a choice between a skinny squirrel or a plump Brontosaurus, you're gonna go with the dino, right?
Not only this, but immediately after getting off the ark, Noah builds an altar and makes a sacrifice - so that's another species gone! Unicorns, maybe?
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So John the Baptist is baptizing folks and he sees the hipster Pharisees and Sadducees coming to the river to get baptized because all the cool kids are. And John starts hating and calls em a brood of vipers and that a little water on their snakeskins isn't gonna make a difference and that trying to pull rank by pointing out their great-great-great-grandaddy Abraham isn't gonna cut it - their lives must change, not their skin!
I love this passage for a few reasons. I get tickled when folks in the Bible get ornery and start bustin chops... it's just cool to me. Secondly and most importantly and finally, I see the correlation between John's words and the behavior change I try to teach my clients about every day.
Often, I have clients come in who say that they don't need to do "all the extra stuff" like get a sponsor, go to meetings, work the steps - they just need to get sober for a little while and get the drugs out of their system. And to me that's like the 'sees going down to the water, trying to cover their butts with the latest kick - I don't need to turn my heart towards God, as long as I'm paying my dues in the club. Both of these things are erroneous - my clients because using drugs is just one of many defective behaviors that cause their lives to go awry and the 'sees because, as we learned with David and his brothers, God doesn't care what you look like - He cares about the heart.
*EDIT* We're talking Creation, animals, in the beginning... eh, guess I'll drop this jam.
