Thursday, October 16, 2008

Chapter Three - An End, A Beginning

Was reading a John Eldredge daily devotional today and he pointed out that we as humans only made it to chapter three in the very first book in the Bible before "we drove it off a cliff". I did some research, and a normal Bible has a little under 1,200 chapters in it total (New and Old Testaments combined).

Out of 1,200...we made it to three. That's pathetic. Breaking that down, if the whole
Bible (by chapters) was a 2-hour movie, then we made it roughly 20 seconds into our epic before tanking the whole deal. Awesome.

What's more is the introduction in my NIV
Bible to set up Genesis lasts longer in both page- and word-count than Man's perfect reign. Seriously. Six pages to barely four.

Think about that for a
second. It's so sad, it's embarrassing.

What's inspiring in all this is that it didn't end at Chapter Three - and it could have. But God, being God, instead graced us with 1,197 some-odd more chapters. 1,197 chapters of hope, promise and New Life. Almost like a God-sized, "But then..." at the end of Genesis 3. Especially with the New Testament, the life of Christ, the words "written in red" and of course The Resurrection.

So one way to look at it is God traded the best we could do, three lousy chapters, for much, much more (1,197). Which is a great deal. Of love, kindness and mercy.

Ok, that's your
Bible Study moment for the day. Have a great evening!

No comments: