My Day In A Nutshell - Catching Up

Last week was pretty stressful and my attention was completely focused on those issues, so we have some catching up to do.

The first thing are the rainbows that were sighted everywhere over the last two weeks.

My brother took this picture.  I thought it was the perfect example of the beauty of life fighting its way through the ugly parts.

We also watched Twitches.

and Halloweentown

and a few Halloween episodes of cartoons like Sophia the First and Jake and the Neverland Pirates over the week.

I also watched two episodes of the Flintstones:

The Golf Champion (because I couldn't remember where I left off) and

The Sweepstakes Ticket

I finished another book and uploaded a book review about it to YouTube today but you can also watch it here:

But aside from uploading the video I should back up now and start with my morning today so here it is:

I started my day by reading today’s entry in my The One Year Chronological Bible.  I happen to read the New International Version.  Today’s reading included the bits about The Coming of the Kingdom of God, The Parable of the Persistent Widow, and the part where Jesus Goes to the Feast of Tabernacles. 

The thing that I love about this bible is that it puts the stories of the bible in the order that we currently think they happened in.  I find this so helpful for so many reasons.  First, it makes it a much more cohesive story that I can follow and ultimately better understand.  Second, because it puts the stories in order by the date that they possibly happened it helps me put the stories into context.  Times were different then.  I think many people who struggle with the bible do so because it doesn’t always make sense when it is assumed into the context of today’s culture.  It seems overtly violent in some sections, and extremely misogynistic at times, and very materialistic at times, and so many other examples that just don’t click in our brains when we forget that it happened at the very beginning of the evolution of man and then the stories were passed down through the telephone game in many instances before the stories were put in written form and were then of course written into the context of that time period rather than the period when it is thought to have occurred and since then we have translated and translated and translated them time and time again trying to make them make sense for our current languages and culture.  Third, because today's “preachers” are really not much more than motivational speakers these days and the actual practice of teaching the bible has gone by the wayside.  So if you are like me you haven’t really had any solid biblical instruction since your childhood Sunday School lessons.  Church has become more of an hour spent pumping up your ego and children’s church more of an hour of babysitting designed to just keep children entertained and not breaking things.  So with all of this I find it so helpful being able to read the bible “in order” and am able to connect with it and understand it much better.  It puts the logic back into it in a way that my brain can better process and understand and I would highly recommend it.  Of course I have many different bibles and many different translations and I find value in every one of them, but I think having the stories told in order in bite sized chunks that can be read daily and finished over a year’s time makes it convenient for everyone from the beginner to the expert.  If you have been feeling disconnected from the bible or religion at all or just feel like you don't know the bible as well as you would like to then this might be just the thing you need to get yourself plugged back in.

Next I read my daily devotional from The Upper Room.  Today’s entry touched on the Friendship with God through Christ.  I use my Good News Bible in the Good News Translation for this because I find it to be my easy reading version of the bible that has been translated and simplified into a telling of the bible that most matches our current vernacular and just allows me to focus more on the point of the devotional itself and less on the effort to understand the meaning of the words and the sentence structure of the bible itself.

Then I read a chapter of the book I’m just reading for fun.  It’s a book called The Millionaires by Brad Meltzer.  I’ve actually read it before but am reading it again because I systematically read through my collection of books over and over and over again.  After all, the whole point of having books is not to just fill up space in a home, but to actually read them.  So imagine if you worked at a private bank that handles money for only the richest of clients who have to be invited to keep their money at the bank in the first place and you discover that there might be someone in the bank working an elaborate scheme stealing money.  Sounds like a pretty heart pounding position to be in doesn’t it?  If you answered yes to that question you might want to read this book.

  

  We also did some fun things like sliding down a hill on a cardboard box and might or might not have had some Halloween candy.  I'm pleading the fifth on that last one.

There is a lot more I could tell you about, but how much are you really going to read in one day anyway?  I'll save some for the next time.

How was your day?