Lead to It

One day while we were preparing for Bible Study, we were discussing bibles.  I have a copy of God’s Word which has been highlighted and tabbed and flipped through, and it’s starting to look a little battered.  I call it my Working Bible.  And while the translation is usually fine, there are times when I want something different, or something to compare it to, so I was saying that I needed to find another Bible, and the Lord said to me, Half Price Books, Beth.

And I felt really dumb.  Why hadn’t I thought of that?

So, the next time I got paid, I went to Half Price Books, and there was only one Bible on the shelves which appealed to me.  It is a New Revised Standard.   It has the Apocrypha, and before each Book is an explanation of where the book came from and what we know about it historically, and in the back is about sixty pages of history and explanation. 

I am not working right now.  I have had lots of time to do some writing and to do other important things like get a gold on every level of Farm Frenzy 2 (except one, still can’t beat that one) and play Megapolis on my new phone.  I also decided, just because, to also try to learn to speak Mandarin.   Wo xue zhong wen, bu hui shuo zhong wen.

I had been thinking for a while about trying to take a course on the Bible from one of the online universities, so one day, when I had exhausted all my other activities, I got on the internet and searched for a free online course that wasn’t too tied to some particular denomination.  I didn’t find one, but I did send off a query to an online university, thinking I was just going to get a course description.

Instead I got two phone calls and an application for admittance.  Part of the application was an agreement to sign a Declaration of Faith which said that you believed certain things. 

Most of it I had no problem with, but one of the articles was that there would be a Judgement Day and people would stand up from their graves.  I don’t believe that.  I do not believe that, for example, my father is going to climb out of his grave on a certain day because I believe he is already in Heaven.  And this is exactly the kind of thing I don’t like to waste a lot of time on. 

But that is only a small aside to the point. 

The reason I really couldn’t have signed that Declaration, even if I had the money to go to their school, was that I do not believe that my getting an education with them should hinge on identical beliefs, and moreover, I do not think that God requires each of us to believe exactly the same thing or to do exactly the same thing or to perform exactly the same job.

I believe that you have a conversation with God, and He tells you what He expects from you.  But He bases His expectations on who you are, where you’ve been and what you’re capable of.  And He doesn’t expect the same thing from each of us. 

He knows each of us intimately, and He understands that one person may be full of love and kindness and open to ideas of vast forgiveness or charity, that another has been so battered and abused by life that they are struggling just to say a kind word.  And for now, a kind word is all He expects from them.

When I was sorting these thoughts out for myself, I had such a moment of clarity that I had to write it down. 

And I decided to use that Bible that the Lord led me to, and educate myself with all those essays and histories and footnotes.  But first I decided to read the story of the Gospel in chronological order, skipping back and forth between Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and here is the first verse that struck a chord with me.

 

Do not put the Lord your God to the test.  Matthew 4:7 and Luke 4:13 and Deuteronomy 6:16