Toluu : By Farther Steps

By Farther Steps

Reformed and Reforming, semper reformanda to Christ's glory.

In my vain imaginings, I picture Moses writing Genesis, the beginning of his writings, just after the golden calf incident in Exodus 32. Israel built an image of their ‘god’, but it wasn’t the right God! What they needed at that point was a theology lesson. They needed to know who their God was and where they’d come from. He wasn’t anything like the gods of Egypt (where just they’d left after 400 years) and he wasn’t anything like the gods of Canaan (where they were headed). They also needed to understand what God was up to in bringing them out of Egypt and leading them to Canaan. That meant that they needed to understand Abraham. They needed this theology lesson in a pure form, not mixed with the Egyptian or Canaanite myths. So under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Moses began to write.

I have really no way of proving this time line, it is theory and conjecture. It could have been that Moses wrote Genesis long after Mount Sinai or even before it. However, this kind of seems right to me. One of the little clues that I might be on to something is the story of Babel in Genesis 11. In his writing Moses rushes pretty quickly from creation to Abraham so all of the stories and genealogies in the first 11 chapters of Genesis are important. They are the things Moses slows down enough to tell us so pay attention! With B

Jan 09 Reading ReportJanuary 3

Getting Things Done, David Allen - I want to be more productive. I think I’m pretty much on top of it, but feel like that could turn if I get one more thing added. This should help.

Don’t Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus Is Not Enough, Michael Wittmer - Got it for Christmas (thanks Becky!) and Wittmer says a lot of things I’ve been thinking about for a while. Hopefully it will motivate me to do something about them!

The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story, Craig Bartholomew & Michael Goheen - Preparing for a Sunday school class in the spring. I like the introduction of the book, we’ll see how the rest of it goes. Good so far.

Leading With a Limp, Dan Allender - I love the subtitle of this “Taking full advantage of your greatest weakness.” Not enough of that kind of thought in books on Christian leadership. We’ll get to this later in the month.

Solomon’s Leadership Secret EpilogJanuary 2

Though used in a different context, I thought these words from G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy expanded on what I was saying earlier:

Actors who can’t act believe in themselves; and debtors who won’t pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one’s self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who has it has ‘Hanwell‘ written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus.

What’s a Day For?January 1

Is time measurement arbitrary? That is, is the division of trips around the sun into years just something we do?

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. - Genesis 1:14-19

One of the reasons we mark years and days and (more significantly) weeks is because that’s how God set it up. In making the universe the way he did, in placing the stars where they are, in placing the earth where it is, with the atmosphere it has, on the tilted axis it twirls on, God made it so we could mark years and days. The regularity with with they pass is a testament to God’s faithfulness. Consider,

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: “Thus says the Lord: If you can break my covenant with the day and my

Tolerance 09January 1

I have had a “bad” stomach for about 20 years now. I remember in 1988 after I returned from England how by 10AM my stomach would hurt so bad that I’d have to go buy a carton of milk to get it to settle down. I couldn’t figure out what was causing it. I’d have oatmeal for breakfast and have an upset stomach by 10. I finally went to the hospital and they tested me for ulcers and such. Nothing. So they put me on medication. Don’t you love that? Couldn’t figure out what was wrong so they gave me pills! Anyway, the Zantac helped for a year or two.

Today, no more Zantac and I pretty much have my stomach problems under control. I just watch what and when I eat and I’m okay. So what was it? Wheat. Sure, I had oatmeal for breakfast, but I’d eat it with buttered toast. Took me quite a while to figure it out. But this morning I had peanut butter on buttered toast and a cup of coffee. Can I expect an attack soon? Probably not. What I’ve learned is not to totally eliminate wheat from my diet, but to take a little bit every once in a while.

You see, I’ve found that my body can tolerate some wheat. Apparently, it doesn’t like it and can’t handle large amounts of the stuff, but it can tolerate a moderate amount. That’s what tolerance is. Tolerance isn’t my body just getting over its problem with wheat and accepting it completely as part of my diet. Tolerance in this case is my body not liking it but accepting it in specific ways. That’s what t