Job 5:1-7:21 As we sat for our Thanksgiving meal in 2007, my mother, wracked with pain, wanted us to read The Message Bible’s introduction to the book of Job. “When these people go through suffering, their lives are often transformed, deepened, marked with beauty and holiness, in remarkable ways that could never have been anticipated before the suffering.” This was true in her life. She saw her ma...

Job 1:1-4:21 One of the clearest opportunities to find what we believe is to suffer. When we find ourselves in a hard place like Job, it quickly reveals our true beliefs about God. Job loses his wealth, family (except his wife), and physical comfort, and after this spends nearly forty chapters wrestling with the why of his suffering. Job cannot understand why he would be made to suffer and determi...

Genesis 47:28-50:26 One common objection skeptics have against the Bible is that God is not as clear about certain moral issues, like slavery, as they think he should have been. The Bible gives principles that would ultimately eradicate slavery but, as we read through the Old Testament, we may find ourselves wrestling with why God would seem to go along with the culture in various ways. Despite th...

Genesis 45:16-47:27 I think we have a secret desire for our lives to be like a dot-to-dot puzzle─let me explain. In a dot-to-dot, there is a clear next step for your life. You move from number 1, to number 2, etc. There are no surprises and, from the very beginning, you can get a general sense of where you are headed and what the picture is going to be. Life is not like that. It is filled with twi...

Genesis 42:1-45:15 We love movies with a surprise ending. I can still remember the first time I watched Sixth Sense and only discovered the real meaning of the movie at its conclusion. Many of the stories in the Bible have similar stories of twists, turns, and shocking outcomes. Joseph’s life is one of these. He shifts from favored child, to slave, to prisoner, to second in command of the nation E...

Genesis 40:1-23, 35:28-29, 41:1-57 Have you ever had the experience where you were praying but felt like you were simply talking to a wall? You were talking, but God seemed silent? We may feel like God is silent, distant, and potentially even uninterested in our lives. However, the important truth we need to embrace is that God has spoken and is speaking in a number of ways, if we would only liste...

Genesis 37:1-38:30; 1 Chronicles 2:3-6, 8; Genesis 39:1-23 How we respond to the ups and downs we face in life reveals a lot about our character and our relationship with God. Joseph is introduced as a spoiled, favored child of Jacob who did not mind gloating over his brothers. He is exalted in his family but is quickly brought low as a slave and prisoner in Egypt. In these humiliating circumstanc...

Genesis 36:1-19; 1 Chronicles 1:35-37; Genesis 36:20-30; 1 Chronicles 1:38-42; Genesis 36:31-43; 1 Chronicles 1:43-2:2 We are introduced to the mighty nation of Edom today. In their time, these descendants of Esau would have great strength, power, and political prowess. We spend fifty-nine verses recounting their generations, chiefs, and accomplishments, then we have two verses at the end that spe...

Genesis 32:1-35:27 The Bible is filled with people who are good and bad, lovers and haters, peacemakers and violent. Often all these behaviors are in one person. I mean, is that not true of us? Jacob is this type of character. We have continually been faced with his deception, lies, waywardness, and sin. As he approaches his family reunion and his anxiety builds in Genesis 32, we may expect much o...

Genesis 30:25-31:55 Being a person of integrity involves being honest and upright. Our character is not to be divided between deception and truthfulness but always marked by honesty. We have seen again and again that Jacob was a man marked by deception, which is what his name means. Jacob was not alone in having a lack of integrity. His father-in-law continually sought to thwart their agreements a...

Genesis 28:6-30:24 Everyone wants to be loved. This desire crosses cultures, genders, and the centuries. Esau, Leah, and Rachel all seek to find love and acceptance through a variety of means. Esau adds a non-Canaanite bride to his collection of wives thinking this will cause him to be loved by his parents. Leah certainly would have dealt with an inferiority complex. She had such "weak eyes" (almo...

Genesis 25:27-28:5 Conflict is everywhere. We can see it in nature, cities, arguments, politics, and in our homes. The household of Isaac and Rebekah was a model of disunity. Jacob and Esau were caught in an endless game of one-upmanship. Jacob was willing to do anything including withholding a meal from his potentially dying brother and lying to his father. As if that sibling rivalry was not bad ...

Genesis 25:1-4; 1 Chronicles 1:32-33; Genesis 25:5-6, 12-18; 1 Chronicles 1:28-31, 34; Genesis 25:19-26, 7-11 Genealogies take up a surprising amount of the Bible. Genealogies are lists of each generation in succession. We may find ourselves breezing through these sections, stumbling over names, and wondering why they are there. One of the reasons we have these lists is that they are displays of G...

Genesis 21:8-23:20, 11:32, 24:1-67 Abraham was willing to sacrifice that which he treasured more than anything else to obey God. He put God’s commands above his own wishes by being willing to sacrifice his son if that is what God demanded of him. It is not hard to imagine the quiet, depressing walk as Abraham and Isaac walked up the mountain to the place of sacrifice. Yet at the final moment, God ...

Genesis 18:1-21:7 God shows his desire to enter a relationship with his creation in innumerable ways in the Bible. We have seen God enter covenants to express his desire for relationship, and in today’s reading we see God's willingness to enter into conversation with us. When God announced that judgment would fall upon Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham seeks to intervene by entering a dialogue with God....

Genesis 15:1-17:27 The main story of the Bible is God seeking a relationship with his wayward creation. One of the primary ways he does this is through a series of covenants. A biblical covenant is a contract or agreement entered by God for the blessing of humanity, and especially those who trust in him. One of these covenants is the Abrahamic Covenant; a promise from God that land, seed, and bles...

Genesis 11:1-26; 1 Chronicles 1:24-27; Genesis 11:27-31, 12:1-14:24 God's plan seems to be consistently thwarted throughout the Bible. God choose to work through Adam and Eve and they rebelled. God worked through Noah and his lineage, but their righteousness was short-lived. Today we see God choose to work through Abram who would become the father of a great nation. He promised an old childless ma...

Genesis 7:1-10:5; 1 Chronicles 1:5-7; Genesis 10:6-20; 1 Chronicles 1:8-16; Genesis 10:21-30; 1 Chronicles 1:17-23; Genesis 10:31-32 We should ask these critical questions as we read: 1) What did my reading teach me about God? 2) What did my reading teach me about myself/humanity? Today we discover the grace and justice of God. His justice is seen in sending a flood to destroy/cleanse a sinful wor...

Genesis 4:1-5:32; 1 Chronicles 1:1-4; Genesis 6:1-22 It is not hard to imagine the hopeful expectation that Adam and Eve must have had at the birth of their first son. Would Cain be the one to crush the head of the serpent and be their savior? He not only failed to crush Satan's head but would actually crush his brother's head in an act of murder. By the time of Noah, God saw "how great the wicked...

Genesis 1:1-3:24 The first two chapters of Genesis are like the beginning of a traditional roller coaster ride. These chapters take you up, up, up to see the grand, beautiful world God has made. You see God's hand creating a very good world. Yet like the rest of a roller coaster, chapter 3 takes us down a steep drop. We find ourselves plummeting toward disaster as Adam and Eve rebel against God. S...