June 3

Thank you to everyone who has read or clicked on my blog. Today, I passed 3,500 views. I appreciate all the support, comments, questions, and prayers.

OT -- 2 Samuel 20:14-22:20
Another hard scripture part to deal with. Today, someone asked me what I have learned so far in my Bible in Year. What I have learned is that pastors, Sunday School lessons, Women's Bible studies, even the medieval Rabbis, none of them want to deal with the really hard passages other than to say -- we can't know the mind of God.
No, but we surely know the minds of men and men use religion ALL THE TIME to justify brutality and cruelty to other humans and lifeforms. What David did to Saul's descendants is brutality in barest form. I do not believe that God affirmed that decision.
Reading the Bible this way is messing with a lot of my composure.
Tough.
If you are having the same issues I am, please know that you are not alone. I am, however, pressing on. I encourage you to do the same. There has to be some reason these scriptures have endured for thousands of years.

NT -- Acts 1:1-26
Today, we leave the gospels and venture into the only 1st hand account we have of the early church, Acts.
The actual full title is Acts of The Apostles. The word apostle means 'one who is sent' and that is referring to the ones Jesus sent out into the world to bring people to God.
Acts is the second book of the author of Luke and is a continuation of that story. The author briefly recounts Jesus' last days with his disciples after the resurrection and his ascension. After this,the book recounts the coming of the Holy Spirit, the organization of the early church and Paul's missionary journeys.
It has been postulated that Luke and Acts were actually supposed to have been part of a trilogy. Acts ends abruptly with Paul's arrival in Rome for his trial. The postulation is that either the 3rd book was lost or not completed.
For many of us, there are huge parts of Acts that are not read or studied in Sunday School or church. And unlike the gospels, we do not have other Biblical sources to look back and forth to understand what was going on.
Hopefully, this will be a great time of study for each of us.

Psalm 121
Love this one!

Proverbs 16:18
Nice to know where this one came from!