I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. (Psalms 139:14)
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 1:26-27)
JOY ARRIVED IN CHATTANOOGA NOVEMBER 1956; DAVID 15 MONTHS LATER. Joy found her motherly instinct in feeding David. In 1959 we moved to Pensacola, Florida. In the right picture above, Joy is dressed up for Sunday school.
THE MOBILE HOME IN THE BACKGROUND IS A STORY. We had bought it new, and had it pulled from Chattanooga to Pensacola; parked it under a grove of Water Oak trees. One chilly night we fired the kerosene furnace and went to bed. We awakened and flipped on the light, but it was dim. Our mouth and nose were black and black cobwebs were hanging from the light. We began coughing and realized the room was full of black carbon smoke from the furnace.
A FREAK ATMOSPHERIC DEPRESSION HAD SETTLED ONTO THE TREES and the furnace was running on low and was not hot enough to push the smoke through the trees. It backed up into the mobile home and we were close to being on our way to the other world. The reason we did not all perish is that it wasn’t our time.
OUR NEXT STOP WAS JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA where Joy turned three. She was a chatterbox and full of questions. One evening she and I were outside, sitting on a bottom step. We looked up at the sky and I said: “Do you see the star?” “Can you say star?” “Do you know who made the star?” “God made the star.” “Do you know who made you?” “God made you.”
FROM THAT DAY FORWARD, IT WAS A CONTINUAL GAME OF NAMING THINGS GOD made and sounding the name of it. One day we were driving through a street in Jacksonville and a dump truck was dumping dirt to fill a wash-out. We had to stop and wait. Joy pointed to the truck and I knew she wanted me to tell her what it was. “It’s a truck. Can you say truck?” She said: “truck.” “God made the truck?” I said, “No, a man made the truck.” That was a challenge. Now she was facing a whole new world of separating what God had made from what man had made. It held her fascination for several months and she learned the names of many things and whether God made them or if they were man-made.
WHAT I DIDN'T THINK ABOUT, was that Joy would soon start teaching her brother, David, the names of star and tree and flower and God made them; and the names of truck, car, bicycle and shoes that man had made. It had not occurred to me that I was teaching a teacher.
BACK UP A BIT: While we lived in Pensacola, I found a Christian bookstore and a book: “The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes” by Ken Taylor. Our family called it: “The Baby Moses Book.” (The Christian Bookstore in Southern Pines, NC has them. Or you can find used copies at Amazon.) Ken Taylor wrote the stories for his children during his daily train trek from home to his work in Chicago. He died in 2005 at age 88. He and his wife had ten children and 28 grandchildren.
WE READ THE STORY BOOK TO JOY AND DAVID. Each story included a full-page, four-color picture. As we read the stories to them, we asked them if they could point to: (whatever we named). It became a routine. We read and asked them to point and name the people/things in the picture.
SOON, JOY WAS "READING" THE STORIES TO DAVID. She couldn’t read a word but that didn’t stop her from reading to David. We turned the book over to Joy and David with the simple instruction: “Take good care of it and try not to tear it. Don’t mark in it.” So, they carried the book around and looked at it at will and told the stories to each other. David learned that he could read the stories even though he couldn’t read either. They were very good at reading pictures.
THE ABOVE STORY HAD ONE OVERRIDING POINT: “God made me.” When God called Moses to the great task of leading the nation of Israel out of Egypt into a land the Lord would show them, he began writing a book for them. The first thing God had Moses to write about in his book, was where they came from and where the world, the sun, moon and stars came from.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2) In the rest of chapter one Moses continues with the story and finishes with:
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31) Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. (Genesis 2:1)
EVERYTHING IS BRAND-SPANKING NEW! NOTHING HAS DIED YET. God looked at everything He had made, and it was not just “good;” it was VERY GOOD! “Very” leaps out at me. I first though it might have been added by the King James translators and that it would be in italics. Not added. Not in italics. “Very” in verse 31 above is translated from a Hebrew word. I give you the lengthy Strong’s Dictionary entry for “very.”
VERY: STRONG'S DICTIONARY, WORD #H3966 From the same as H181; properly vehemence, that is, (with or without preposition) vehemently; by implication wholly, speedily, etc. (often with other words as an intensive or superlative; especially when repeated): - diligently, especially, exceeding (-ly), far, fast, good, great (-ly), X louder and louder, might (-ily, -y), (so) much, quickly, (so) sore, utterly, very (+ much, sore), well.” (God is pleased with how good it is.)
QUESTION: WOULD GOD HAVE SAID HIS CREATION WAS VERY GOOD if it had been filled with billions of dead animal fossils? Jewish and Christian traditions (3,000 years for Jewish tradition and 2,000 years for Christian tradition) have both held that nothing had died when God finished His creation in six days. Every living thing God had made was still alive after six days of creation.
“IN THE BEGINNING" OCCURS 17 TIMES IN THE BIBLE. Each time “in the beginning” occurs, the context of its occurrence is plain enough for any common person to see what it’s talking about. When Jesus refers divorce back to “the beginning,” it points back to that week of creation. Earth, stars, animals, first man and first woman, all of it is contained in “In the Beginning.”
THE PERIOD OF "IN THE BEGINNING" IS SIX DAYS. He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered (allowed) you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. (Matthew 19:8) The whole of creation is included in: “in the beginning.” Those six days. It is not good to take apart what God has put together. “In the beginning” is a cluster of six days, and not great periods of time made up by modern men and dragged into the Bible.
Read Through the Bible in a Year
AUGUST 30, 2019 - FRIDAY
A.M. Psalm 142-144 P.M. 1 Corinthians 10:14-23
(Bible Gateway will read this to you if you like. Look for the speaker icon.)
A Good Verse to Memorize:
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. (Matthew 4:4 (See Deuteronomy 8:3)
Song for Today:
Just Keep on Praying (3:08) (Seniors-Duet with Accordion)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9m975_J3Pg
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Health Tip:
Protein in Plants. The protein in green grass is demonstrated by the large protein bodies of cows and horses that are made mostly of green grass. The protein in carrot juice is about the same as the protein in human mother’s milk. All vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, beans, grains contain protein. A medium-size potato contains about six grams of protein, or about the same as in an egg. Protein is made up of nine “Essential” amino acids and four “Non-essential” amino acids. By mixing plants in our diet, we can get complete protein.
In the beginning, the ideal human diet appointed by God was a diet of plants (Genesis 1:29). After the Flood, the earth experienced an ice age and growing crops was limited. We were then allowed to eat animals: Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. (Genesis 9:3) When we eat food of any kind, the body breaks the protein down into its amino acids and reassembles the amino acids into the desirable form.