Sunday, January 31

The last day of January. I've gone through a whole month of reading the Bible and I'm still enjoying it very much. I'm finding that a lot of the conclusions I draw actually come mid-stream while writing. So if I wasn't writing about each entry, I would probably miss a lot of stuff. Alright - enough self praise. In reality, this thing is a lowly attempt at understanding something that may never be fully understood by anyone in its entirety. I'm just excited to be finally reading everything the Bible has to offer. So let's see what it has to offer this evening :D Yeah!

Reading for January 31
Exodus 12:14-13:16 

Passover
After God's final plague (death of the first born) comes to fruition, Pharaoh demands that the Israelites leave his land. I think the Disney movie "The Prince of Egypt" did a great job with this scene, showing Pharaoh's intense sadness over losing his son. I should watch that again - I think the book was better though.

The rest of this lengthy section of text focuses exclusively on the rules around passover.

1) No yeast, anywhere, ever, ever.
2) Only Israelites can celebrate passover. If you have guests over, they must be circumcised if they want to celebrate.
3) Don't eat any freaking yeast.
4) You do no talk about yeast club.

Seriously, read that section of text, God mentions the avoidance of yeast 16 times in these two chapters. It's crazy. I think this is just another symbolic, obedience to God kind of thing, but its obviously important if he said it so many times.

Matthew 20:29-21:22
The most remarkable thing about this chapter is Jesus saying that we ourselves can perform miracles.

This occurred after Jesus made a fig tree wither up instantly. He said

 ²¹ Then Jesus told them, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. ²² You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you will receive it.”

I've prayed for things before and haven't received them. Was it because I didn't have enough faith, or was it because it wasn't what God wanted for me? So far I haven't read anything about praying for something that you won't get because it isn't part of God's plan for your life. I'm pretty sure it comes up later, but its just interesting that Jesus put it this way.

The other thing I've been debating in my mind about prayer is this: When we receive answers to our prayers - tangible answers - is that God responding or is it the power of the mind to manipulate the surrounding environment? I know this is going to sound REALLY stupid, but here is an example: I was watching an episode of Chris Angel: Mindfreak (Seriously, I'm sorry, but bear with me) and he was in a circle of people on the street in vegas. He selected a girl at random and asked her if there was someone in her life who she hadn't heard from in a while.  She named someone and then Mr. Angel made everyone in the circle of people (probably about 100 people) visualise this person texting his volunteer. He had them all "wish it" or "will it into happening" and it did.

I realize that its a TV show and it could have been faked, but that sort of stuff happens all the time apart from God. So is it God answering our prayers, or us answering our own with the power of our mind? I suppose if there wasn't a diety to pray to to convince ourselves that what we wanted could happen it wouldn't work. It's just interesting.

Psalm 25:16-22

Another psalm considering his enemies and praying for protection from God. Nothing else too notable here.

Proverbs 6:12-15
All you crooked criminals, listen up:

 ¹² What are worthless and wicked people like?
      They are constant liars,
 ¹³ signaling their deceit with a wink of the eye,
      a nudge of the foot, or the wiggle of fingers.
 ¹⁴ Their perverted hearts plot evil,
      and they constantly stir up trouble.
 ¹⁵ But they will be destroyed suddenly,
      broken in an instant beyond all hope of healing.

That'll do it for me. I'm glad I was able to catch up today, but now I'm insanely tired, and it is bedtime. Thanks for reading old chums.