Millions upon millions of people know that the Bible begins like this: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”  The first chapter of the book of Genesis goes on from there to describe how God created our world.  At the end of nearly every phase of His creation, God said, “and it was good.”  Therefore, we know that everything He created was good.  Then verse 26 says, “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.”  Next, verse 27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

It is clear that men and women were created in God’s image.  Why did He create them in His image?  The next chapter tells us that God breathed the breath of life into the man and man became a living soul.  The end of the same chapter says, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”  God’s thoughts are so much higher than ours.  Isn’t that a good thing?  We have messed things up so badly, but it’s comforting to know that He is way smarter than us and knows what He is doing.  So, what are we to get from these verses?  Why are they included in the Bible?

I am (and  you are) a descendant of Adam and after God created my many times multiple great grandfather, He said, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”  God is again making it clear that He created me perfectly for the life that I need to live while I am in this world.  He gave me everything I need, the personality that will be best, and the family (with all of its positives and negatives) that will be best for what He needs to get out of me.  “And God saw that it was good.”  Therefore, shouldn’t I embrace what He has given me?  It’s perfect!  Philippians 4:11 says, “Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”  In this life, I am a woman.  Should I not embrace that?  In my little neck of the woods, that is the life that will be most useful for others and yet will also make me the happiest when I find the direction and the meaning for my life.

We are losing so much of our humanity in this world today.  Many young people are not content with how God created them.  They are listening to voices that are telling them they would be happier if they were something else.  We no longer have two genders that God created, but gender seems to be a fluid continuum and people seem to move from one thing to another with just the flick of a finger.  I would like to present the idea that these new ideas cannot truly make people happy.  True happiness comes from finding your true God life inside of yourself and being content with that.

It’s quite tricky to discuss this idea these days because everyone assumes that you are a hater if you say something that does not fit the “new norm.”  I would state the opposite.  I love people and it is profoundly sad that so many do not know who they are and think that if they could just change their outward appearance from a man to a woman or from a woman to a man, that then they would find happiness.  I understand that some people truly don’t know if they are male or female because this world has become very confused.  There are so many synthetic hormones in our environment and those hormones do affect people.  We can never know truly why people choose to change their gender identity, but I firmly believe that many today have simply not tried or have not been able to find the God life within themselves.  They are looking for happiness in all the wrong places and that is truly a tragedy, but that does not mean that we should embrace all of the new gender identities and turn our backs on God instituted marriages between a man and a woman.

It’s also a tragedy that Christians are afraid to say anything to oppose the tsunami of opinions and political correctness that paint Biblical Christian ideas as being “hate speech.”  That is simply not true.  I would also add that if we continue to keep silent about this issue, it will quickly become outmoded or even illegal to believe in the Bible and in the holiness of living the truth of the Bible.  So many anti-Christian ideas are already being taught to little children, our children and our grandchildren.

We need to pray for the next generations and we also need to be able to at least maintain our beliefs without fear of governmental or societal reprisals.  What would you say that Christians can do or need to do in order to help our world turn back to God?  Can we turn back to Biblical principles and show the world that it is love, not hate, that motivates us?

It is an outstanding gift to be able to read the Bible from cover to cover in a year. There are many apps that help us to accomplish it these days, making it very available to us in several formats.

As your year of reading begins, you read the story of how God created the world. By his word, he proceeded step by step, and each of those steps added to the creation of an amazingly beautiful world. He put the man and the woman in the garden of his creation and gave them an apparently simple restriction. Don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because if you do, you will surely die. Although that seems simple enough, along came the evil one lying, making insinuations and creating doubt in the woman’s mind. We all know where that led to.

At the end of your year of reading, you arrive at the book of Revelation. In it, God shows the culmination of mankind’s journey from the state of sin, through the process of overcoming, leading to his/her salvation and the ultimate return to God’s paradise. When we read the last chapters of Revelation, the paradise that is described appears to be similar to the first, but when you compare it to the first, this paradise seems more glorious than the first. The first one had a garden, everything that mankind needed to live, trees that were pleasant to the sight, and a river that split into four rivers. Most importantly, God Himself liked to walk there. In the paradise in Revelation, sits God’s throne and the throne of the Lamb, and from that throne comes a river, but this river is the water of life, clear as crystal. On either side of that river of life is the tree of life. There is no more curse in this place and no more night. God’s servants will see God’s face in this place and there is not even a sun because God Himself gives them light. You can see that this paradise is clearly even more magnificent than the first.

In between the first paradise and the last, all the pages of the Bible tell the story of sin and its consequences and mankind’s struggle to overcome it, the life stories of men and women who succeeded and of those who did not. It tells of overcomers, prophets, evil kings, good kings, simple people and so much more. We read of Abraham, Jacob and Esau, King David, his son Solomon, Manasseh, Moses, Samuel, Rahab, and so many others. Each of their lives added to the human story, both good and bad. Those whose lives demonstrated overcoming added to the river of life and showed the way of salvation to those who would come after them. Those who succumbed to satan’s ploys added something important as well. They gave us an image of what not to do, how not to live. Looking at the whole, we see a grand snapshot of God’s eternal plan of salvation and the final restoration of Adam’s descendants. We see God’s compassion and kindness and learn from the mistakes of those who went before us.

Through the richness of the Bible, we learn that we do not have to live as some have lived, but we can live following the example of the most amazing life ever lived, the life of Jesus. What an awesome and splendid story we find in the life of Jesus. We can read his life’s story over and over again and learn more from it each time. Even today, in the midst of a world that seems to have gone mad, we can still find his words jumping out from the pages of this book, beckoning us to live them and make them our own. This book tells us of those who did it. They lived his words. In their lives they succeeded and showed us that we can too. Jesus showed us that God is his father. We are all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, whose father was God. That makes God our father as well. That means that we can all find the path to salvation if we desire it. With the life of Jesus and the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, we are well able.

Best wishes for a successful overcoming life with Jesus in 2021!