The New Testament track of our daily reading plan had us in Mark all last week and most of the week before. It will keep us in Mark all this week and the first part of next week. Of all the Gospels, Mark is the most utilitarian, that is, it is the easiest to
If you are doing the New Testament track of this year’s reading plan, then you are now moving into the Gospel of John. There you will remain for the next four weeks. In many ways, John will be familiar to us. It will be familiar to those of us who grew up in Sunday
We have just finished the book of Leviticus. I imagine most of us are happy it is over. I doubt anyone really loves reading this particular book of the Bible. I understand that sentiment. To be fair, Leviticus is legitimately the most “Law” of all the Law books. While Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy all
If you are following the New Testament track, you are entering the book of Romans. Romans is the first of the epistles. That is, it is the first of the epistles in the biblical order (or canon). It is likely not the first epistle to be written; that is probably James. But it was
Our daily reading plan is moving us from one book of wisdom poetry to another. We are leaving Job and coming into Proverbs. Proverbs is not like the other books of the Bible. Most books of the Bible are “narratives”. They tell a story of one sort or another, and they are based around
Those of us on the New Testament track of our daily reading plan have been in Acts for a couple weeks now. What we said in the last post about the title of Job is also true of the title of Acts. It is one of the simplest titles of the books of the
Our daily reading plan takes us to our final book both of the year and of the Bible this year. That book is the book of Revelation. The fact that we are in Revelation right now, the final few days of the year, bothers me for two reasons. The first is that we are
Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah and mother of John the Baptist, is not usually included in our traditional nativity scenes. As far as I know, she is never included in our traditional nativity scenes. I have never encountered a nativity scene that had Elizabeth standing next to the angels, animals, shepherds, and wise men
