Beloved

There are so many things I feel like I could write, but since I don't want to commit to writing a novel tonight perhaps I'll keep it down to one or two things God has shown me in the past couple weeks. First, I started the 90-day Bible reading plan at the beginning of March and aside from being pretty intense (reading 12-15 chapters a day), it's been really good to get more of an all-encompassing view of what's going on in each "story". Near the end of Deuteronomy, the Israelites are preparing to enter the promised land and, as He has done so many times before, the Lord is speaking to Moses:

The Lord said to Moses, "You are about to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon commit adultery with the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will abandon Me and break the covenant I have made with them. 17 My anger will burn against them on that day; I will abandon them and hide My face from them so that they will become easy prey. Many troubles and afflictions will come to them. On that day they will say, 'Haven't these troubles come to us because our God is no longer with us?' 18 I will certainly hide My face on that day because of all the evil they have done by turning to other gods.  ~Deuteronomy 31:16-18

 Honestly, if this were all up to me, mankind would be sunk. If I knew, going into this, that everyone who claimed to follow me would turn their backs on me, betray me and abandon me, I would have given up before we even got started. Which is why I'm not God and He is. It astounds me the love that He has for us; that even though He knew from the start the Israelites would abandon their God to run after other gods, He has never given up on them. He has never given up on any of us. (side note: I think this is the biggest benefit I see in reading such large chunks of Scripture; everything that happens, whether good or bad, is all a result of God's love for His people. Whether He is disciplining the Israelites for something they've done, or promising to be with them always, it is all out of a love that is totally unchanging, unending, and unconditional)

Keeping in the vein of God's love, I'll let this video do most of the talking for me. I came across this today and as I was sharing the premise of it with a couple girlfriends, I started getting chills just talking about it. The video is done by one of the members of the band Tenth Avenue North and it's about the setting behind their new song Beloved. Check out the parallels between Jewish custom and the Last Supper. 

So? Will you take the invitation if you haven't already?

A Coincidence No Longer

On NCIS, Leroy Jethro Gibbs has come up with a set of "rules" he lives by. One of them is that there is no such thing as a coincidence and I agree with him wholeheartedly. So I've started calling them "God-incidences". And I'm noticing them all over the place.

First, this morning I was reading in Genesis (I just started the 90-day Bible reading plan; hoo-boy! That's a time commitment and a half, but I know it's going to be so worth it!) about God's promise to Abraham and then on the way to church, I was listening to the radio and the DJ was talking about the very passages I had just read! And here's the neat little thought he shared: we all make promises; small promises, big promises, but God makes God-sized promises. He told Abraham that he would be a blessing to everyone. Not just the people living on the planet at the time, not just us, but to all people who would seek God through Jesus Christ throughout all time. Pretty amazing, right?

Then, this morning at church, our pastor ended the sermon with the passage James 1:2-4;
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 
which was the focus in day one of our homework in a study on the book of James I'm doing with a few other women right now.

I love God-incidences!