Are You in God’s Family Tree?

The internet makes researching family trees relatively easy. So many people are interested in their family stories Ancestry.com predicts it will earn $280 million in 2010. Ancestry.com is capitalizing on more than a fad, however. The industrial revolution and modern transportation enabled people to move away from their places of birth. Rootlessness is epidemic. Sadly even with speed-of-sound transportation and speed-of-light communication we’re losing connectedness with family and family histories.

Before I was born, my parents moved 200 miles north from Trinidad, CO to Denver, looking for work. We quit driving back down for visits in the late 60s. Over the years, as my grandparents and parents passed away, I lost touch with my family, my history. I now know very little about my grandparents and nothing before them.

Yet I know I am who I am in part because of who they were. Trouble is I don’t know who they were. When my mother passed away in 2003, I imagined myself as a small boat drifting out to sea, having been cut loose from the dock. I know I have a history, but don’t know what it is, and worse, don’t know how to carry it into the future.

Eugene C. Scott joins Mike in writing A Daily Bible Conversation twice a week.

TODAY’S READING (click here to view today’s reading online)

1 Kings 5:1-6:38

Acts 7:1-29

Psalm 127:1-5

Proverbs 16:28-30

INSIGHTS AND EXPLANATIONS

1 Kings 5:1-6:38: Solomon’s Temple was a wonder. Its splendor spoke to how powerful Israel under David had become. The Temple and its courts covered as much ground as a modern shopping mall. Yet this is the top of the slide. The nation is so safe and comfortable that even their wise king begins to forget who got them there: God. Pride comes before a fall.

Psalm 127:1-5: Aristotle posited the concept of “the unmoved mover.” This is the power that first caused the universe and set it in motion. Later Paul Tillich called this our “ground of being.” The psalmist simply says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.” Sometimes a metaphor spun by the poet tells a truth better than any scientist or philosopher. God is the beginning and end. If we try to move or live without him, we will fail. Maybe not instantly, but eventually.

If you’ve found A Daily Bible Conversation helpful, share it with your friends. Forward your daily email or send them a link to the website: www.bibleconversation.com.

THE WORD MADE FRESH

The Bible is many things. Some see it as a life instruction manual. There’s even an inane acronym for this: B.I.B.L.E. (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth). Others treat the Bible as a theological textbook. But what we don’t recognize is that the Bible is a family history: a narrative of God’s ongoing interaction with his sons and daughters.

In Acts chapter 7 Stephan continues the narrative as a defense against the accusations of the Jewish religious leaders. A strange defense. Why do they stone him in the end?

Because Stephan takes his place in a long line of God’s storytellers who, at critical points in time, add their present story to God’s past interaction. Past storytellers added Isaac to Abraham and Joseph to Jacob and David to Samuel. Stephan adds Jesus to them all.

The religious leaders knew what Stephan was about, validating Jesus by connecting him to a long line of people who carried God’s redemption from the past into the present. Stephen declares Jesus the denouement, the final resolution to a dramatic thousand year-old narrative, the amen.

What does this mean for us today? Though Jesus is the final resolution, the story is not over. God wants to add our stories to his story. Just as God added each new generation to the narrative, when they stepped into the story of his redemption, so too can we.

We have not moved too far from our family home, nor are we boats loosed from the docks and adrift. We have not lost touch with our true family. We are connected through our brother Jesus to our Father, God.

Ancestry.com mirrors how much many of us need to be connected to our past.  But we don’t need Ancestry.com tell us who we are truly connected to. It is written on every page of this book we call the Bible.

1. Which passage spoke to you and why?
2. Has God connected you to his story?
3. If so, when and how?

If you’re reading this blog on Facebook and you’d like to join the conversation, click here. www.bibleconversation.com.

Eugene co-pastors The Neighborhood Church in Littleton, CO and writes a blog eugenesgodsightings.blogspot.com

Sometimes God Scares Me Spitless

After I first started following Christ, circa 1972, I devoured the Bible. I loved it; I needed it. The stories about Jesus especially gave me hope. He was so self-assured, kind, smart, unflappable–all the things I didn’t feel I was. The way he treated the underdogs with respect, dignity, and love let me know he would treat me likewise.

Not to mention the miracles and all the other amazing stuff he did and said. Jesus made me feel good. I couldn’t get enough and toted my Bible everywhere I went.

But after a time certain parts bothered me. God scared me spitless. Especially the story of Ananias and Sapphira dying after lying to Peter and God about how much of their money they donated from the sale their property. I mean I was–and still am–far from perfect. What would stop God from just taking me out? If he did, I would probably deserve it.

Eugene C. Scott joins Mike in writing A Daily Bible Conversation twice a week.

TODAY’S READING (click here to view today’s reading online)

1 Kings 2:1-3:3

Acts 5:1-42

Psalm 125:1-5

Proverbs 16:25

INSIGHTS AND EXPLANATIONS

1 Kings 2:1-3:3: The continuing political intrigue, mistrust, dishonesty, etc. surrounding even David’s throne is a fulfillment of what God said (back near the end of Judges) a monarchy would produce. Human government can do no other. Yet God used David and his lineage to give the world a Savior. God always has a strong hand on events and history, shaping them to his end, even when they look like they are going the opposite direction.

Acts 5:1-42: The Church has never been without problems. Many of us have a tendency to wish the Church today were more like the First Century Church. Little do we realize that it is, both good and bad. The Church is a divine invention with humans mucking up the works. Thus it has always been.

Yet God continues to love us–the Church–and use us–the Church. Gamaliel said it best, “If their [people of the Church] purpose or activity is of human origin it will fail. But if it is of God, you will not be able to stop [it].”

Two thousand years later even many followers of Christ distrust and dislike the Church. But that does not mean her days are numbered but rather that God maybe reforming her again and getting us ready for something new.

If you’ve found A Daily Bible Conversation helpful, share it with your friends. Forward your daily email or send them a link to the website: www.bibleconversation.com.

THE WORD MADE FRESH

How do we deal with the Bible stories about God we are uncomfortable with, don’t like, or that scare us spitless?

For a time I ignored them and only paid attention to the sections that made me feel good.

In seminary, though, I had to face these ugly pictures of God and humans. It is in seminary also, however, I learned to reason the difficult passages away. One branch of scholarship simply decided that the parts of the Bible they were uncomfortable with were not inspired by God but made up by humans. The trouble with this, as you probably know, is that more of the Bible is harsh than sweet and, in the end, this group began to call the whole book myth.

The opposite branch cried foul to that but developed a whole series of complicated systematic theologies to explain  many of these problem passages. Some of these explanations made sense, some did not. I agree with many of them. But they are often convoluted and too complex.

Slowly I’ve come to see that maybe the problem is not with God or the Bible, but with me. My view of God is askew. And coming up with ways to validate my perspective on life and God only puts more distance between God and me. I have begun to believe maybe God holds more in his hand for me (and all of creation) than me feeling good.

If God’s top priority is other than making me feel good or be happy, then maybe it’s okay to be uncomfortable, not like, and be scared spitless by certain parts of the Bible and God. Maybe I’m supposed to feel that way and not know all the answers.

It seems to me God does not view pain, death, and even life the same way we do. Are they to God as splinters and knee scrapes are to parents of young children? We care–but know these pains are not the end of the world.

Somehow I’m beginning to see how God, with his vast view of eternity, knows that seventy to eighty years (more or less) of life containing a mixed bag of pain and joy that ends in death is only a blink of his eternal eye. Beyond that blink lies much more than we can think or imagine.

Should I be scared that God let Ananias and Sapphira die because of their lies? Sure enough. God is not safe. But God is so good that he will not let what happens to us in this broken world to define him or us, because there is so much more in store.

1. When have you expected God to make you feel good? Did he?
2. Have you learned more about God in difficult times or easy?

If you’re reading this blog on Facebook and you’d like to join the conversation, click here. www.bibleconversation.com.

Eugene co-pastors The Neighborhood Church in Littleton, CO and writes a blog eugenesgodsightings.blogspot.com