Tonight, Rebecca and I along with our good friends Jackson and Janelle attended a “Story of God” teaching session. “Story of God” is a particular method of teaching about God where the bible, from start to finish is covered in “story” form. The teacher starts in the “beginning” with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and tells the story all the way through to the very end of the biblical account. The teacher reads for about 5 minutes at a time, and then stops to ask questions about how the group is perceiving what is going on. The people in the room provide feedback and the teacher simply guides the group through the questions and then moves back into the story smoothly once the commentary has subsided. The discussion portions tend to go on for about twice as long as the previous reading. The actual full length “Story of God” experience takes many weeks to complete and is often done in small group environments. We went tonight to get a sense of how it works and to learn about how to teach it in our small group. It was absolutely remarkable. It’s amazing how hearing the “Story” of how God made us, loves us and cares for us in a narrative format, enables an entirely different and more profound depth of understanding to take place. To be honest, I’ve never really been able to engage with the early books of the bible in a way that activated a truly deeper understanding of God. Genesis has been like the health club in my life. In late December I decide I’m going to read the entire bible in a year and then January 2nd I open to page one and begin tearing through Genesis. Kind of like a spiritual health club. By January 9th, I’ve gotten into Leviticus and start believing that I don’t need to read “every” day in order to get through the bible in a year….then I take 11 months off, reducing my bible consumption to semi-daily cherry picking of the Christian top 40 chunks of the bible, mostly in the part that includes the life of Jesus (new testament).

Anyhow, tonight as we worked through the” beginning”, myself along with much of the group seemed to be confronted with an awkward reality about how very morbid…and futile…and nessesarry the exsistence of the “Tree of the knowledge of good and evil”really is.

Ya know what…It’s almost 1:00 AM and I need to feed a precious little six week old, evidenced by her grunting in my ear:)

I’ve posted just this portion of my very incomplete thought so that I would be forced to come back to the keyboard in short order. Trust me when I tell you that Rocky III has once again assisted me in understanding a very complex spiritual concept in very simple terms:)

I’ll finish in the next couple days…I have to now, since I said I would in front of several hundred people:)

Here is a teaser pic…