In the beginning...

As part of the team at Cicero Christian Church that brings you the 90 Day Bible Reading Challenge, I'm going to attempt to send out email encouragement to those of you who signed up for the challenge and provided your email addresses. I thought I would send a verse from the selected reading for the day and try to get prepared in advance (there is a novel idea, wonder if I can pull it off?). So, I started my reading today.

I went to Subway for lunch with Bible in hand (I did not go to McDonald's, for those of you in my Sunday school class). I was irritated by the loud music, and strolled down to the ice cream place down the strip mall and plunked myself up on a stool at the table in front of the sign that told me not to sit there if I was not a customer. They were closed, so I didn't see any real issue. I would pick up my trash.

I started with a prayer ~ admitting what God already knows ~ that I'm basically lazy, and the only way I was going to get through the 90 Day Challenge (in 90 Days!) and encourage others in their challenge was for Him to prompt me pretty regularly through His Holy Spirit to choose the narrow path and just get it done. I'm thankful that I'm a fast reader.

Note to self: pick up my Bible without all the extra notes in it for tomorrow! I picked the wrong Bible to start with ~ The Word in Life Study Bible was on the back seat of my car. It has way too many distractions (great information for a slow read...but I'm on a mission here). I got about 2 chapters in when the owner of the ice cream shop came out and berated me for not heeding the sign. Only kidding - he wanted to know if I got in on the fight at Subway that spilled out into the street. Fortunately, I didn't. He was friendly enough. I got through chapter 9. I need to get through chapter 14. Lucky for me, TV is in reruns and there is nothing on to watch, so after my daughter Grace gets to bed, I should have ample opportunity to finish up. Meanwhile, how do I put a half a check mark on my go deeper laminated chart?

I have to put a plug in for one of my favorite organizations - Answers in Genesis (http://www.answersingenesis.org/). Have you been to their new Creation Museum yet? I highly suggest you go, and familiarize yourself with their excellent approach to a literal 6 day creation.

Being familiar with alot of the AIG stuff, and having done the math of the geneologies years ago to see how beautifully it works out that the oldest of the ancestors of Noah died the year of the flood, I could skip through alot of the questions. Questions like "who was Cain's wife" and "were dinosaurs on the ark." I also read an article in their Answers magazine that, through simple math, demonstrated that if the world was only 10s of thousands of years old (not millions), we would have a population problem now that would be astronomical, but at a moderate birth rate since the flood (about 4400 years ago, remember we started over with only 8 people), calculations would show us about where in population of our world today. Don't even get me started on the million year stuff.

I'm making a note to follow up (in about 100 days) on the following:

• Did Adam and Eve have children while they were in the garden? How else would Eve have known about painless childbirth?


• Why did God really not like Cain's sacrifice? Was it the product, or the attitude?


• What does it mean in Gen 6:1 about Sons of God and daughters of men?


• Who were these giants?

I can't be this long on my other posts or I'll never get done, but I hope you enjoy what you read and comment as you see fit. God bless you for your acceptance of this challenge!