7: Job 11-13 If you can't say nothing nice don't say nothing at all

Day 6 Job 10-13

                Zophar takes his turn, the final friend that Job might have and tada what does Zophar say? Zophar says Dude your lucky for I am sure that God should be harder on you then what he is. Makes me think of my kids every time the boys get in trouble they always say, you would never do that to Lily you always do worse to us. They continuously tell us that we are easier on Lily then we should be and this is the way Zophar feels, I bet they don't have a best friend academy award hanging on their wall (I do).

                I love that when Job finally confronts the friends he tells them…Oh that you would keep silent and it would be your wisdom. I am pretty sure I totally believe this, just like my Grandpa used to say If you can't say nothing nice don't say nothing at all. I love that saying I use it on my kids all the time!

6: Job 6-10/ Dude come On

Day 5 Job 6-10

                Job's friends have let him down, all he wanted was a friend and he gets tons of unsolicited advice, all he wants to do is die but his friends make sure to rub salt in his wounds. Then his friend Bildad speaks and says basically dude come on just admit what you have done and be pardoned basically saying that God would never put these things upon you if you hadn't done something wrong. Once again Job's choice of friends is holding him down. Then I think what would I think if my friends started to have troubles come their way because I am a total believer of natural consequences and if Job had been my friend I can't say that I wouldn't have been at least thinking the same things. And then Job cries out to God that he hates his life, this must have crushed God knowing that one of his beloved is suffering.

4: Job 1-5/ Curse God and Die

Day Four Job 1-5

                Yep we are skipping all the way to Job today, I decided that I am going to go through the bible chronologically because going straight through always leaves me right around Numbers and that’s where I get stuck, so I decided to read in historical fashion what was going on, and get some new bible study going.

                Poor Job, what else can you say? Even his wife is against him on this one saying "Curse God and die" I can't imagine even muttering that to Louie and she just lays it out there, and I can only think maybe Job was a bigger whiner then we think and who wouldn't be? You are sitting on top of the world, thinking all is right and then BAAAM your sheep are dead, your servants are dead and you have blisters all over you (probably leporsy) who wouldn't be whining and of course Job is a man and well we know how that goes he was probably the biggest baby to of all people his wife and we even go through an entire verse where Job curses the day he was born over and over he has an absolute pity party for himself. Of course there are times when Louie is sick that I say "Put your big boy panties on" Job's wife seems as though she has had it.

                The first of Job's friends to finally talk after sitting around staring at each other for 7 days is Eliphaz, and what a friend he turns out to be he basically ends up telling Job, Dude come on we all sin and no man is without guilt so just repent and life will be cool again.  He just proves to be the first of Job's friends to get it wrong. I like to think that as a friend I don't give unnecessary advice, people are who they are and they decide how to run their lives there are times that being a good friend mean staying quiet being there for them rather than telling them what they were doing wrong. I find myself in that situation as of now and in order to keep privacy on this issue I am just going to say that I have to keep my mouth shut as I believe someone makes a mistake that’s the easy part for me, not sticking my chest out afterwards and thinking "Told you so niener niener niener" is going to be the hard part.

3: Gen 8-11/ Noah jumps ship and What did you say?

               Day Three Genesis 8-11

      Wow these verses give a reality to the lucky number seven, even though I am sure Louie and his OCD would completely disagree with me. I say this because it was the seventh month and the seventeenth day that the big ol boat came to a rest. I still get little Goosebumps when I see a rainbow, and no not like the Double Rainbow guy that you can see on UTube I don't freak out like that I just get little Goosebumps remembering that it isn't just the way our eyes see water through some prisms but it is a remembrance of covenant that God made with man.

                Another teaching moment in this that I think I found is that Genesis 9:20 says that Noah had a vineyard and apparently one day went out and got a little tipsy, and can you blame him, I picture him being hot, overly tired from all of the work he had been doing and it probably just felt good to have a few glasses of wine, granted I feel his pain as my other part of my lent experience is giving up wine which of course I feel God is laughing at me because right now with so much going on in our lives and so much yummy Italian food and add into that the Jacuzzi, yes Noah I feel your pain. But his kiddos came in and saw him, first his youngest and I can only imagine what was going through him mind he must have been cracking up finding his father laid out in the yard naked and I bet he ran to get his brothers so they could all have a laugh, go figure instead the brothers took the high road and covered him up and then the next morning as they were drinking their coffee while Noah was dealing with a hangover and I bet those brothers just had to tattles, the first tattletales and they got their way, but I guess that we should just take from this that we should make sure and not take joy at other's sorrows which should be a great lesson for me because I honestly believe that at times I do take joy in situations instead of actually pitying the person.

                And then the tower of Babel to me just another expression of how God has a firm hand and a sense of humor, how witty he must be in order to come up with such a wonderful plan, can't you just see him sitting back with a tub of popcorn watching everyone run around with different words trying to figure everything out?

2: Gen4 thru 7/ Sibling Rilvary and Let it Rain!!!

Day Two Genesis 4-7

Genesis 4 (Cain and Abel) Not much to say about this but this is the first sign of all sibling rivalry, it started with the first siblings and continues to this day, we try super hard to not create a rivalry atmosphere here but of course it still lingers around…everyday, everywhere.  I just wonder what was going through Eve's head when all of this was happening I mean as a mother can anything worse happen than losing one child to another child's hand? The best part of this entire story is the rivalry came not towards what their parents thought about them but what God thought of them which makes it much more interesting and almost more understandable in a small way. As much as I can read into why God chose Abel's sheep over Cain's grain I find that the bible does mention that Abel handed over his firstborn fatlings and such while it says only that Cain brought an offering, so maybe Cain just brought something inferior and kept the best of his crops to himself, needless to say God curses him and tells him that no man will be able to kill him or it will come back to haunt him. Being that I am from Utah I do have to point out that directly after this incident Cain became a polygamist, not that God had said that this was ok, this was just done, God at the beginning had indicated that one man and one woman would be together but hey those are just my two cents, I know that throughout the bible usually when polygamy is concerned it does not end well.

                Genesis 5: A huge list of a family tree listing Adam as 930 years old and so on and so on. This Chapter takes us through to the flood which according to Halley's Bible Guide was actually about 1656 years

                Genesis 6: The Flood: A favorite for parents that incorporates the idea that you have to be good in order to have good brought upon you, bring about badness and tada you are punished. God looks down on us and says basically maybe I have made a mistake, I need to blot you out! Thank Goodness Noah was a mighty man and God liked him otherwise those aliens in the other world would have completely been inhabitating our earth but God found favor in Noah and made him build his boat. What a strict and faithful person Noah must have been to build a boat and how must his neighbors laughed at him over and over building a boat that was 450 feet long 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. which is just out of control to me but I guess when you are carrying around a zoo it has to be big correct. Now to those who say that Noah couldn't have done this alone, it is said that Noah probably had employees and from ancient stories it is thought that he could have been even a city mayor of sorts. I love as a mom that this teaches our children that you need to have rough patches to get to greener pastures. THE LORD SHUT HIM IN what a feeling Noah must have gotten having the door shut behind him by God.

1: Gen1 thru 3 Hello World, Hello Eve, Goodbye Garden

Day One Genesis 1-3

                So this was my first day in my bible reading and of course as life would have it I found myself waking up in a hotel in the middle of nowhere on the first day of lent. I was pleasantly surprised when I woke up and stumbled over to my phone to check the time that it was 6:48am, I hadn't procrastinated on my first day of my lent project, go me!! Thanks to the Gideon's I grabbed a Days Inn notepad and quietly stuck myself in the bathroom so I didn't wake anyone up and read my first days worth of bible the creation story. I am always asking the question of how long a day actually must have been to God right then, I can't help but sometimes wonder if these verses actually span a much longer time then the span of a week. But my favorite is God resting, I can see him putting his feet up and drinking a huge glass of iced tea saying yep "It is good".

                Then poor Adam gets lonely and who can blame the guy sometimes I feel as though I am the only person in the world and in all actuality Adam was the only man in the world so God thought of something wonderful and amazing WOMAN. I have always loved as a woman that we were created to be his ultimate "helper" I once read in a book called Captivating that the word used for this sort of helper didn't mean a maid, or a slave, the word actually used is an Ezer and according to the book it is used only 20 other times throughout the bible each time in reference to God when we really really really need him. After reading that I have always felt more needed especially when you add words in such as "lifesaver" "counterpart" with Louie than anything else we need each other to work together and be eachother's Ezers. Being put on earth as a woman used to make me feel as though we were God's afterthought but if you turn the looking glass it is like he used us to finish off the world, that the world wasn’t complete without us walking it.

                My other favorite phrase was that we leave our fathers and mothers and become one flesh, I love the emotion and physical thought of this verse. Emotionally when you find your correct partner I do feel as though you are able to be one, Louie and I consistently bounce things off each other, balance each other out clearly giving each the other side of the story. And at times when you are physically becoming one…..well is there anything better then that truly another of God's gifts to us.

                -On a side note Eve must have been super hot if as they stood in the garden in all their nakedness and not been ashamed, because EVERY woman I have ever met has some sort of issue with her body regardless of how minute her flaws were, or maybe Eve just didn't have anyone else to compare herself with, there were not any airbrushed Cosmos or Maxims in the garden!

                The fall of man is always one of my favorite stories, and not just because I always tell the kids that snakes are the devil's creatures. This chapter also starts out with what I have always been facinated by that the woman always seems to be the "bad" one, Eve, Potiphar's wife, Lot's wife, the Woman at the Well, Delilah, Sapphira, Rahab, Jezebel, Michal, and the Sinful Woman, the Medium of En Dor, Jael, the Adulteress, Athaliah, Bathsheba, Herodias, Tamar the Widow, and the Bleeding Woman……..man sometimes we need to just leave things alone ladies and then we wonder why God created such a world in which we suffer which hello we put the key in and turned it God told us to leave it alone but nope we turned it LOL makes you wonder what it would be like if we hadn't.  This chapter also showcases another of God's gifts Freedom, Freedom that he has given us. It also is worth mentioning here that it is said that And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring (3:15) many like to say that this showcases the fact that Jesus will be born of Mary's bloodline and only of Mary not of Man.
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Let's get this party started

Well I guess I should start this off correctly, hello. I am here starting a new lent idea blogging my way through the bible. I am hoping that this will help me follow through even if nobody else reads it I know that the internet is out there to check me on it! This is my lent project which I am sure will go farther than just lent but hey that’s part of what I am hoping to get out of this, a stronger spiritual connection that I can incorporate into my everyday life.

I am a Christian born and bred, granted I haven't the wonderful bible knowledge I grew up Lutheran baptized, confirmed, married, my children baptized all that and yes I love potluck picnics and I love singing grace before dinner. I am full of faith but there are many times that I stumble and that I don't hold up God's name. I am not what you would call a religious freak by any since of the word but I am a believer that has lots of questions. As I go through this I am sure that all the other questions that I could post answers to will be answered and whoever chooses to follow me will be overwhelmed by the information that is poured out, I am still debating about doing it anonymously or not….my first real step I guess would be to put it out in my name because as I sit here the back of my mind reminds me "Deny me and I will deny you" So here I go off to post right on my own blog site hopefully not offending anyone.