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Click here to read Genesis 25 on BibleGateway.com

Genesis is one of my favorite books of the Bible. It’s so easy to read; not as easy as a month’s worth of Far Side of course, but slightly easier than Leviticus. However, sometimes Genesis makes a powerful point, but leaves the punch unsaid. It’s like Thanksgiving dinner, but then leaving off the pie. The exclamation point is missing, and it leaves me wanting a little bit of Bible pie. Well, in line with my obvious commitment to benefit mankind by sitting on my rear and typing, today we shall dish up the holy pie.

NOTHING, WHAT’S STEW WITH YOU?

In Genesis 25, we get to meet the brothers of Esau and Jacob. It might be a bit of an understatement to say they had a strained relationship. While sibling rivalry exists in every family, you rarely see brothers handing out death threats or dangling a bowl of soup in front of a starving brother for money. But that’s what we see Jacob doing; Esau comes home from a long day on the hunting trail, and Jacob is working over the Foreman Grill with a large steak for him. Esau begs for a lil taste, which Jacob is happy to give him…in exchange for his birthright. In essence, Jacob offers to sell a sirloin if Esau will give up his future. Surprisingly, Esau agrees.  However, the Bible makes the rather drastic comment that Esau “despised” his birthright.

It used to appear to me that Esau got kind of a bum deal. He was starving, and his conniving brother ripped him off in a moment of weakness. To top it off, the Bible treats it like his fault, and for thousands of years people have been laughing at his moron-acy. Yet if we think about it a little longer, we can see that perhaps Esau is more at fault that might first appear.

WHAT IF

Let’s do a Let’s Pretend. Fact one – Esau knew that God had blessed Grandpa Abraham and Papa Isaac, so he knew the blessing of God was coming down to the next son in line. Fact two – he knew Abraham had been greatly tested by God, and was subsequently blessed. Fact three – ok, i lied; i have no fact three.

So, let’s pretend that Esau, rather than selling his birthright, says no. He replies “Jacob, i’m really starving, but I know if you don’t provide for me, God will provide some other way, because He has promised to be faithful to our family.” Do you really think God would not have honored that? Maybe Esau would be the blessed one; maybe he would have had the big family; maybe we’d be talking about the “children of Esau” and the Esaulite nation in the Middle East today. If had just waited a small bit longer, who knows what would have happened.

How many times have we missed out on God’s full blessing because we bail out when we get a little hungry? Maybe if we had prayed just five more minutes, God would  have spoken louder. Maybe if we had stayed just two minutes longer at church, we would have made a lifelong friend. Maybe if we had read one more verse, we would have heard the Holy Spirit speak and change our lives.

Today, I challenge you to give God just a little more. If you usually read a chapter in the Bible everyday, read 2. If you spend 5 minutes in prayer, spend 7. Your life may just change forever.

Click here to read Acts 22 on BibleGateway.com

When I was a kid, my brothers and I had a bit of a climbing problem. No bridge, building, or tree was safe from our vertical determination. However, you may be startled to learn that some people don’t appreciate children climbing on their places of business. So, we moved on to climbing up billboards, particularly those of well known national hamburger chains. Of course, boys being boys, eventually you have to raise the stakes, and we decided that to really show our superiority, we must not only ascend the heights of commercial advertising, we must also get our dance groove on.

So, one day, I was climbing up the Wendy’s sign with my older brother egging me on as usual (don’t deny it, you know you did.) In any case, after my ascent, I decided to forgo my usual MC Hammer impression and opted for the classic German dance instead. Unfortunately, we were unaware that this was a fairly new sign that had not been completely assembled, and as I got to the dramatic conclusion of my interpretative dance, coinciding with the end of the sign, the “Y” shook loose from the sign. Being the manly man that I am, I screamed like a girl and slid down the pole as fast as I could, joining my brother in time to watch the rather sizable letter drop 30 feet onto the roof of a parked BMW. Which just goes to show: it’s all fun and games until someone polka’s the Y out.

FUN AND GAMES

During our trip though the Bible, I’ve noticed that many times there is an “until.” For instance, one of the great stories of Jesus is when he feeds the five thousand, wherein Jesus uses 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish to feed the crowd at Bethsaida Square Gardens. However, immediately after that Jesus says “I am the bread of life,” and many of these same people leave him. They are excited to be around Jesus during the miracles, but when he reveals the cost of following him they are no longer interested .

Similarly, in our reading today Paul tells his story to a crowd of Jewish people. They love the first part of his tale, as God reveals himself to Paul and changes his life. That is, “until” Paul mentions that God has sent him to the Gentiles, which enrages them to the point that they call for his death, rip their clothes off, and throw dust in the air (tantrum, anyone?).

ALL IN

It seems that most of us have an “until” in our life. We are more than willing to follow God during the good times, but when things get tough we find ourselves drifting away. We attend church faithfully, until hunting season starts. We tithe always, until the money gets tight. We get up early to have devotions every day, until the ball game goes late the night before. We trust God with our future, until it means leaving our hometown/job/house/income, etc. If you look at your life, I don’t think you would have to look far to find your own “until.”

What is it in your life that is holding you back from following Christ completely? Are you holding back your finances? Your hobbies? Your time? Are you willing to give it up? Do you want to get to heaven and hear God say “well done” or “that’s pretty good, you followed me until…” Our walk with Christ is a constant challenge of moving past our “untils”, until we are transformed into His image.

Oh, and by the way, the whole sign story isn’t “true” in the strictest sense, at least as far as my parents know. Let’s keep it that way.

Click here to read Nehemiah 7 on BibleGateway.com

I can deny it no longer; I have somewhat of a Bible-crush on Nehemiah. As we’ve seen elsewhere, Nehemiah was a genius when it came to city administration, but I have to admit that even with my rose-colored Nehemiah-shaded glasses I’ve never noticed this particular gem of his until today. In today’s reading, notice how Nehemiah gives specific directions to the city leaders about when the city gates should be opened. Normally, the gates would be opened when the sun came up, when the city was just waking up, and closed when the sun went down. However, in this case, Nehemiah considerably shortened the business hours of Jerusalem. It seems that there may have been several reasons for this.

KNOCK KNOCK

1) Security
The best times for an enemy to attack would be either early morning before the whole city is awake and active or late in the evening when everyone is settling down for the night. Nehemiah’s plan insured that the gates would remained closed until the majority of the city was awake and alert, and that they would close before people started drifting off to beddy bye time.

2) Correct Priorities
It’s easy for the busy-ness of life to take over our lives before we realize it. By making sure that the gates, and by implication the city business sector, did not open until later and closed early, Nehemiah made sure that people had time to attend to their spiritual lives first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Bookending the day with prayer and devotion is good model for us to emulate today as well.

3) City Development
The Jews had just returned to Jerusalem in Nehemiah’s time, and it make sense that he would want the people to be working on cleaning/rebuilding the city as much as possible. This is similar to when people take off early during the summer work day so they can get home to mow the lawn, paint the deck, fix the torlet, or restock the lawn gnomes in the front yard. The more time people have, the more likely they will give at least some of it to fixing up the city.

Think this doesn’t apply to us today? Oh, how very double dip with chocolate chip wrong you would be.

SET A GUARD

Having trouble finding time for God in your busy schedule? Studies have shown that the best time to study is early morning or late at night. In other words, if you are struggling with your devotion time, perhaps getting up a little earlier or turning off the TV a little earlier would open up some time for you to spend in the Word.

Secondly, if you want to protect your spiritual life, beware the early morning or late night hours The Bible says that sin loves the darkness, and Internet traffic analysis shows that piracy, cheating, and porn traffic all go up when the sun’s down. Work while the sun’s shining, and be very careful when it’s not, or you may find yourself under attack.

Finally, make sure to take time away from work to spend on your own backyard. And I don’t mean the daffodils. Make sure that whatever your line of work, you make time for your family. If the house is rundown, the castle won’t stand long.

Nehemiah knew a small change in schedule could change the future of the whole city. What small change can you make today?

Click here to read Genesis 11 on BibleGateway.com

As you may have gathered from various other points throughout this site, Everyday Devotions is a little bit a stickler when it comes to what the Bible actually says (*coughretentivecough*).  Nothing gets a burr under the saddle quite like people misrepresenting the Bible text.  And before you get on your high llama about the pot calling the kettle black, we can all agree that today’s passage is one of the most misquoted in the entire Bible.  Put on your hip waders, my fellow Bible travelers, we’re going in.

RABBLE BABBLE

The tower of Babel is one of the most famous of all stories in Genesis. Let’s sum up the popular conception.  Some naughty people were living in some place, and they decide to build a big ole honking tower to reach God. God apparently doesn’t like people dropping by unannounced, so instead of helping them with their lincoln-log project, He decides to punish their insolence by mixing up their languages so that they can’t understand each other. Satisfied with another fine day of divine wrath bringing, God watches the poor jabbering masses wander off into the sunset to become the languages that we know and love today. Or manana, if you’re Spanish. And it’s tomorrow.

Here comes the burr: that’s almost a complete fabrication of the story. If this story were in pants form, it would be completely aflame. However, rather than rant and jump about in frustration at the injustice of this interpretation, let’s look at what the text actually says so at least we’ll be in the right, even if everybody else is wrong.

NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Point numero uno: the Babel-ites do not build the tower to reach God; there were plenty of higher mountains around if they wanted to gain elevation. They build the tower so that a) they will be famous (“make a name for ourselves”) and b) to not be scattered over the whole earth. In other words, they want to be well known and to be in charge of everybody, instead of letting all those servants of theirs go wandering off all over the world.

Point numbero two-o:  nowhere in the text does it say that God cursed them. In fact, later on in Revelation we see that there are many languages in Heaven, therefore languages cannot be a symptom of sin or they would not be in heaven.

Point numero three-o: the point of confusing the languages was to get the people to fulfill God’s command from Genesis 1:28 to cover the whole earth. The people at Babel were purposely trying to avoid fulfilling God’s commands, and God merely gave them a little boost to help them get back on the right track. The point of the languages was not to punish, but rather to help people receive the full blessing (i.e. the whole world) that God had for them.

While there maybe Sunday School teachers rolling over in their blue-haired graves, it is very hard to sustain the traditional understanding of this passage. For one more confirmation, look at Acts 2; when the disciples are baptized in the Holy Spirit, they speak with “other tongues,” confirming that other languages are a gift from God, not a curse or punishment.

So celebrate those foreign languages. Eat some nachos and soy sauce whilst you drive around in your volkswagon on your way to the chateau. You’ll have all eternity to enjoy the blessing of Babel.

Click here to read Matthew 9 on BibleGateway.com

In the words of one of the epic wise men of our time, many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view. For instance, it’s undeniably true that a playoff system is far better for college football than the bowl system; unless of course you are a major college power, in which case the bowl system is better for your greedy, soul-less bowl promoters. Both cases are true, depending on your point of view and level of evilness. If point of view can change how we perceive life, the question naturally follows: what should our perspective be?

DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?

When you approach the “world,” i.e the people that don’t go to your church, what do you see? It seems that often we see “the others” as something less than friendly. Many of us are on various church email lists or facebook groups. In general, what kind of tone do these groups have about non-believers? Is the tone encouraging? Is it inviting? Or is it threatened? Is it talking about how God loves everyone, or about how some groups are destroying our heritage/culture/faith/country/etc.? What would Jesus think about these groups?

In our reading today, we see that when Jesus saw the “others” in the crowd, he “had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless.” Is that how you see people outside of your church? Do you have compassion on them? When you see people drinking at the local watering hole, do you say to yourself “man, I’m glad I’m not like those drunken sinners,” or do you say “God, how can I show these people your love?” Are you secretly glad when the stinky homeless guy who visits your church sits somewhere else, or does your heart break when you see him? When you see that woman with that revealing dress walk down the street, do you want help her see that God loves her no matter what, or do you think less complimentary thoughts about her attire?

One of the great challenges of the Christian life is to adjust our vision to see the world as Jesus sees it. It seems like we more often see non-christians as harassers rather than the harassed, or we are filled more with fear or disgust at the sight of the effects of sin rather being filled with compassion. How do we change our perspective?

YOU TURN YOURSELF ABOUT

Truth be told, it doesn’t seem like the Bible spells this one out, but Jesus does give us a couple of pointers that may help. He says “pray…to the Lord…because the workers are few.” It seems then that our first job is to pray; pray for God to change our vision and our hearts. We pray to the Lord; we must get to know Jesus or we will never see the world as he does.

Second, our beliefs must affect our actions. Though there are plenty of secular charities out there that do great work (i’m looking at you, Bono), the reality is that our relationship to Christ can greatly affect our compassion. The Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey reported that “the average annual giving among the religious is $2,210, whereas it is $642 among the secular. Similarly, religious people volunteer an average of 12 times per year, while secular people volunteer an average of 5.8 times.” If our focus is on Christ, our giving will reflect that.

Finally, we need to realize that the workers are few, so we need to get busy. We must realize that our work is needed, and that the most important thing we do is to just get started. Doing a little bit of something is far better than doing a whole lot of nothing. Often times once we start on the work, God reveals more of his vision to us, which leads us into more work, and more vision. We have to get started.

What will you see today?

Click here to read Acts 8 on BibleGateway.com

Why is it that the right thing is always so painful? Why do you have to work so hard to work out? Why is it better to save than to spend? Why is it better to think of others instead of ourselves? Why is it better to eat asparagus instead of a dozen snickerdoodles? One would think that God would make all the stuff that’s good for us also the easiest, wouldn’t one?

Well, today we get a little insight into God’s perspective on the whole pain thing. Let’s jump back just a bit to set the stage: in Acts 1, Jesus tells his disciples “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Sounds pretty good; a little talking, a little traveling, and it’s all good. But as Acts progresses, the disciples seem to be a little slow-going. We read how “every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts…and all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade.” The new believers enjoyed their new-found fellowship and joy, but they weren’t really doing what Jesus commanded.

COURSE CORRECTION

So, now we come to Acts 8, and Saul (soon to be Paul) gets his Pharisee Posse together to round up them nasty believers. He goes from house to house and puts anyone he finds into prison. Thus “On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria…those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.” Sound familiar? The disciples had been reluctant to leave the comfort of Jerusalem and the home church and carry the Good News to the rest of the world; so God either sent or allowed persecution to come against them, in order to encourage them.  A little divine swat on the tushy, if you will.

Notice how many of the great stories of Acts come after this point. It was the persecution that laid the groundwork for the great things that God did in the future. Though it’s unlikely that the disciples appreciated the persecution at the time, there’s little doubt that the miracles and wonders came as a result of the disciples being “forced” to obey Jesus’ command to spread out. God used the pain of persecution to get the believers back into his will and to show them a fuller glory.

RICE CAKE AND RAISINS

This is not to say that all pain in our lives is sent by God (after all, this world is not how God intended it thanks to Adam and the Evester), but Romans tells us that God works all things together for our good. Whether or not God is actually sending the pain is a matter of debate for the tweed-suit crowd, but we can trust that God is using that pain to advance his kingdom and bring us closer to himself. That means we should not necessarily be asking God to deliver us from pain or ask “Why are you doing this?” but rather we should be asking “How are you using this?” It’s not easy to change our perspective (actually, i’d rather have my toenails pulled out) but it’s important to understand that God’s desire is not necessarily for us to have an easy life, but rather a fulfilled life.

Now I have a choice to make: here sits my yogurt and my Hershey Kisses. Decisions are painful.

Click here to read Genesis 7 on BibleGateway.com

Can I share a pet peeve with you? Actually, I have several pet peeves, like when you’re eating a box of oreos and your kids keep whining like “we haven’t eaten in three days, Daddy. Can’t we please have one oreo?” Seriously. If you want to eat, go get a job and stop wasting all your money on diapers. I don’t know if that’s really a pet peeve; just seems so obvious. But, for something a little more universal, let’s look at a biblical pet peeve. Go and ask ten people who Noah was. At least eight of them will say “the guy with the ark.”  Then ask how long he was on the ark. Almost everyone will say forty days. It’s just common knowledge. The problem is it’s not true.

EIGHTEEN SCORE AND FIFTEEN DAYS

In Genesis 7, we learn that Noah gathered up his own personal zoo and packs them all into his big ole barge. But when the waters come, it’s not only rain; the waters also come up from the “springs of the deep.” In other words, somehow water came up as well as down, possibly as geysers or something similar. This downpour lasts for forty days, as most people know, but Noah and his family don’t come out immediately after the rain stops. In fact, the flood covers the earth for 150 days. But even now, the Noah’s don’t get to come out. In chapter 7, it says that the rains came when Noah was 600 on the “17th day of the second month,” and chapter 8 says that they came out of the ark when he was 601 on “27th day of the second month.” In other words, they were on the ark for one year and ten days, or 375 days. That’s a long cry from 40 days.

So what’s the peeve? So many people are “certain” of what the Bible says without actually reading it. It seems that we are all guilty of this. How many times have you heard people quote “God helps those who help themselves” as if it’s in the Bible? (it’s not.) Or that we all have a guardian angel (not mentioned in the Bible). Or that “God works in mysterious ways”? None of these things are in the Bible, but they sound so good we figure they must be in there somewhere.

HEZEKIAH 15:12

It seems that the more one reads the Bible, the more one is surprised as much by what is not there as what is. For example, did you know that many English translations do not even have the word “lucifer” in them? True story. Many people who actually manage to read the whole Bible make comments such as “I never imagined that was in the Bible,” especially when it comes to some of the more violent and racy parts. The truth is the Bible reflects reality and who we are as people, which is sometimes surprising, sometimes shocking, sometimes disgusting, and sometimes inspiring. But more importantly, it’s about who God is, and therefore it seems like it might be fairly important to actually see what He tells us about Himself. Just my opinion.

Since it’s January, let’s make a deal. As we move through the Bible for these little readings, let’s agree to actually read the chapter. I’ll even put a handy-dandy little link at the top of the page for you to click on. All you have to do is click and read. That way, when we finish going through the Bible, hopefully we’ll actually know what the Bible says, rather than what somebody heard somebody say about what sounds like it might be in the Bible. Not to mention that God may just say a thing or two to us in the process. Pretty sweet.

Guess I better feed these kids. Oreo wrappers are edible, right?

Click here to read Ezra 6 on BibleGateway.com

It seems that Hollywood never runs out of love for the personification motif. For those of you that are getting ready to look up the definition of “personification,” let me save you the trouble. Notice how many movies in the last decade revolve around something made of plastic or metal coming to life: toys, cars, computers, radios, and on and on. For a little realism, I’d like to see someone make a movie about the life of keys after dark; there’s no other explanation for how my car keys can begin the night on the hall table when I place them, and end the night in the nether regions of the couch. I understand that all creatures great and small have the need to explore, but I don’t think scaling Mt Davenport is going to inspire anyone, so Mr. Keys should just stay in his little cubby instead of invoking his little key-pixie wanderlust.

FETCH ME MY ROYAL PAPERS

Rest assured, fellow Bible trekker, that wandering inanimate objects did not start with the era of moving pictures. For as long as people have been making stuff, stuff has been wedging itself into cushions, falling behind appliances, and traversing the digestive tracts of family pets. In Ezra 6, we see King Darius trying to locate a decree of his predecessor, King Cyrus. He naturally looks in the royal archives in the capital, but alas, ye olde paper gnome has stolen the paper. It eventually turns up in Ecbatana, the summer home of the kings. Always in the last place you look.

Moreover, this is no ordinary decree. Cyrus had granted the Israelites the opportunity to rebuild their temple, an opportunity that was going unfulfilled due to (among other things) the ongoing harassment of the Israelites’ neighbors. This misplaced little note proved that the Jews not only had the right to rebuild their temple, but that anyone that interfered was to be impaled on one of the supporting walls of his own home. Gotta love the warm fuzzies of those crazy Persians.

ONE MAN’S TRASH

Notice how this document, so vitally important to one group of persons, was so forgettable by the issuing king that he left it at his beach house with his royal speedos. Often times, we don’t realize how the little things in our lives can be essential to the lives of others. That extra dollar you left as a tip at Bob’s House o’ Chicken Wings? Maybe that was enough for the waitress to pay for a doctor visit for her sick baby. That extra second you took to allow Old Lady McCreary to cross the street in front of you? Maybe that saved her life. That little “thank you” may be just what the ticket agent at the airport needed to hear that day. Opening the door for that man at the grocery store may be just what saves his back from needing another surgery.

The Bible makes clear again and again how the most insignificant events can change fate in ways we can’t begin to imagine. What will you do today to change the world?