Congratulations! You have finished reading the book of Genesis! Were there surprises? Did you learn or hear new things?
In Genesis 50:20--"Even though you [devised/planned/meant]to do harm to me, God [devised/planned/meant] it for good...."Abraham says this to his brothers about their plan to get rid of him. Abraham forgives them; he knows God is in control. God is in control, even when others devise evil or perpetrate evil upon us. God doesn't plan or calculate or cause the evil to happen in our lives. God doesn't intend for our suffering. But, as broken humanity, suffering is a reality that we bring into our own lives and the lives of others. God's power, God's grace, is to turn a human plan that creates suffering into a plan of redemption, reconciliation, and restoration. God doesn't cause the suffering; God redeems the suffering.
Psalm 17:8--a well-known verse: Keep [guard] me as the apple of the eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings. The Hebrew here is a bit tricky: Keep [guard] me as the pupil of eye, daughter of eye---not quite the "apple" we are used to. And the verb, shamar, is to keep or to guard--like a shepherd keeps and guards sheep. This verse is certainly about shelter, but it's also about our context---we belong in the very center of God (and God in us)---this is from where we are to live and move and have our being. Our home base is in the pupil of God's eye, underneath the sheltering wings of the Divine.
Matthew 15:24-26: In this text, the evangelist has Jesus say that just as the King's children are tax-exempt, so are we as God's children. This begs the question: how are we free? In the Gospel of John, Jesus also claims that the Truth shall set us free. How does being a disciple (one who follows a rule) of Jesus make one free? What does our tax exempt status mean?
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