Monday, March 10 Devotional Psalm 41, 44, 52 Genesis 37:1-11 1Corinthians 1:1-19 Mark 1:1-13 My knowledge of the Bible is child-like. I even used a children’s Bible to look up my Lenten verses in the hope that I might understand the meanings better. My knowledge of the Bible is minimal, but my faith is great. As a child, I had many opportunities to turn from God. Once I sat down with the Bible, intending to start reading it, only to have my mother and sister ridicule me. I had started the preparations to receive my Holy Communion only to have my mom decide it was a mistake. The reason? My dad thought it was a good idea. (Those of you with divorced parents will understand that logic.) When I went away to school, I could have explored God’s word, but didn’t. I could have gone to church, but didn’t. I dappled in it by going to the occasional service or Bible study, but mainly I stayed in my own little bubble. I stayed in my bubble, but I still had my faith. I present this background to introduce my thoughts concerning a por-tion of I Corinthians 1-17 in which Paul says, “He gave me the work of preaching the Good News without using words of worldly wisdom. If I used worldly wisdom to tell the Good News, the cross of Christ would lose its power.” Do I have great faith because I don’t have great worldly wisdom? There are many people out there (some of whom I include among my friends) who don’t have faith or threw their faith away because the Bible conflicts with their worldly wisdom. Or perhaps their worldly wisdom prohibits them from getting past the contradictions of the Bible. They point out that some verses say different things or give conflicting accounts of the same story. In their minds, this means that the Bible is erroneous, a work of fiction. My mind doesn’t take me to this place. It could be secondary to my lack of worldly wisdom. More likely, however, it is because although I didn’t become vested in God, he became vested in me from as early as I can remember.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 06:34:38 +0000