Thoughts from
Rev. Dr. Tassie Green,
Interim Senior Pastor.

Do any of you create actual scrapbooks or photo albums of your year? Or do you have all your precious memories stored in your phone? For Christmas, I created an album for my folks with 52 pages of our greater-family’s, summer reunion at the lake. It included my folks and their 7 kids/spouses, 3 of 9 grandkids–and most importantly, all 6 great grands who range from 2 to 9 years old. Beautiful photos taken by my brother, a professional photographer, recorded exciting firsts such as learning to waterski, jumping on the trampoline, bravely swimming out to the raft, the littles’ wrestling big cousin Michael (my son), and many, many meals enjoyed together. Every year someone’s crying in the family photo and every year someone gets stung or bitten, usually by hornets, but sometimes by a cousin. I thought only the oldest generation would wish for the album. But one by one, each of my sibs have asked for a copy to treasure. It’s a great memory of 10 “days in the life”; it records 4 generations’ attempts at loving one another, while often driving each other nuts.

Just so, the Bible is a scrapbook of real people’s daily lives as they try to walk faithfully with their God, more or less successfully. The first family portrayed are a snapshot of sibling rivalry gone bad and their struggling parents. They grow into a beautifully-difficult, dysfunctional family, full of murders, liars, cheaters and fighters. Plus siblings who sell their own brother, spies, tricksters, con-men (and women), prostitutes, cowards, and loud-mouths. And that’s just counting the patriarchs and leaders in first 32 chapters.

The entire biblical scrapbook contains snapshots of a zillion biblical events that were experienced or written in:

  • gardens & olive groves
  • aboard arks & ships,
  • while shipwrecked–or swallowed by a whale!
  • shepherds’ fields & palaces
  • battlefields & prisons
  • construction sites & temples,
  • cisterns & slave-quarters
  • mountain tops & deserts
  • while in exile, taken captive, or newly-liberated
  • at weddings & at last meals with friends.

Whew! That’s a lot of action. What are some of your favorite pages in the biblical scrapbook?

On the journey with you,
Pastor Tassie

Photo by Kirk Cameron on Unsplash