Two paths

Church this morning. At the back of the church, a box of copies of Hodder's The Bible in One Year. The sermon, mostly on Genesis 1. This is where it began (more or less). But, I was keen to get started on January 1. And Tyndale's One Year Bible is better resourced. I tried to find out from Hodder the readings for the the first couple of weeks, so that I could have read from an ordinary bible until these hard copies arrived. But they didn't answer my email.

I'm maybe making a mountain out of a molehill here. I'm finding the eReader version of Tyndale's One Year Bible an excellent way to make good progress. In theory, I could spend time each week sorting out the readings from Hodder's programme (which looks broadly similar, to begin with, anyway), and then read them on my Palm (using, for example, GMP Soft's superb Bible With You). Or I could carry the hardback of Hodder's Bible in One Year in my rucsac. I believe that, rather, having started I shall finish, and stick with Tyndale. It should be fun, walking an almost parallel road. I shan't be in church every Sunday, and some Sundays I shall be helping with Kidz Klub, so it maybe makes sense to regard the weekly sermon as a bonus instead of relying on it to keep me going. I have a tremendously sad memory of when I attended a church in Aberdeen which was famous for its bible teaching. The minister was preaching through Romans chapter by chapter (having previously spent years preaching through Romans verse by verse), and I was in my mother's house, and I was going to miss one sermon, and was desperate.

Paradoxically, Sunday isn't a good day for finding time to sit down and read. I may have to catch up to-morrow. But I have managed to read the account of Abraham's meeting with three men, one of whom appears to be God. They're going to see whether the people of Sodom are really as bad as they've heard. And Abraham tries to persuade God not to destroy the city, if just ten good people can be found (he starts with fifty, then beats God down to ten). I'm somewhat shocked by the ordinariness of the encounter. In other places, God is so awesomely 'other'. Here, he's just a person. Does this foreshadow Jesus coming among us?