Daily Bible Reading (Click play for dramatic audio or click here to for text version)

Devotional Guide (Click play to start audio narration)

When you see a shadow, you are seeing a faint reflection of an object or person that comes from standing in front of a source of light. God who is called light in the scriptures says we are like Him as a shadow bears the outline of its maker. When God says that we were “made in his image,” He is saying we were made from a pattern or outline that reflects something about Him. The main word for God in the scriptures is "the one who exists." He is personal and capable of relating to us in that way. We, like God, exist and have personalities.

Why did God tell the people of Israel not to attempt to reprint him using forms, images or statues? God told us He did not want us to make images (shadow outlines) of Him partly because there was no image full enough or beautiful enough to represent Him well. This is why He came Himself as the Son of God and why the scriptures teach that Jesus was the “exact representation of His image.” Jesus allowed us to see God for who He really is. While God created us in His image and likeness we have fallen short of the goal of representing Him well. We have missed the mark. This was what the word “sin” meant in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

The Hebrew scriptures attempt to map words to concrete things that we can relate to. Rather than dealing with abstract truths, they wanted relate their language to practical things that humans could feel, taste, or touch? Think of a cord. Cords were used for binding as well as measuring. A cord was often stretched between two points to measure.

The root word used for sin is “to miss the mark.” When archers would aim at a target but miss they would use a cord to measure the distance between the target and the shot. The goal of this was not shame, blame or guilt but improvement. The more the archer measured the more they were able to change their aim for the next shot. God’s target is having us represent Him well.

ur English use of the word sin has been marred with cultural baggage that is tied only to shame, blame and guilt. God simply wanted us to represent Him well and to bear his image but we “missed the target” and so He had to come and represent Himself to the World to set the record straight. Shame is rooted in an incorrect understanding of our identity.

When the story of Adam and Eve is told in the Hebrew Bible they do experience shame because they have lost their identity which was connected deeply to the healthy relationship they had with God where they “walked with Him in the cool of the day.” Shame comes when we think of ourselves as existing independent from God and we define good and evil on our own terms. The book of Genesis tells the story of creation, the origin of shame, blame and humans independence from God.

The word Genesis means “beginnings.” We all began but often don’t know how or why. While some believe the accounts from the Hebrew Bible found in the book of Genesis are unscientific and more of the substance of myth and folklore, others have found deep significance from their telling and have been amazed by the how it provides a story for our beginning that is deeply rich and complex yet simple at the same time.

“In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.” Genesis 1:1

When you think of the word “beginning” used in Genesis think about a Head. The head of the tribe (chief) or family (father) is passed from generation to generation. The idea is that inheritance comes from the head of the family. As the head (creator, author) God has graciously allowed us to inherit this Earth. Think of the head of a river as being its starting place. Think of the initiation of time as its starting point. Stephen Hawking concluded in one of his lectures that

“the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang.” Stephen Hawking

It is not hard to align the scientific perspective of the Bing Bang with the account in Genesis. The Big Bang was “Like a rapidly expanding balloon, it swelled from a size smaller than an electron to nearly its current size within a tiny fraction of a second.”

Atheist-turned-agnostic astronomer Fred Hoyle, who coined the term “Big Bang,” famously stated, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics."

As Hoyle saw it, the Big Bang was not a chaotic explosion, but rather a very highly ordered event – one that could not have occurred by random chance. Interesting that Bill Gates, when asked about the DNA code that all living beings require for life to exist, said that

“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”

Perhaps the DNA code came from an intelligent being who made us in His image as explained in Genesis? The next video is an overview of the first half of the first book of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures called Genesis. 

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