Picturepocket's Blog

Tag: Bible

  • John 1: Our Light in the Darkness 

    “In the beginning was the Word” starts the book of John, the fourth and final gospel account. John says that the Word was with God and was God and was life that became the light. He introduces John, Jesus’s baptizing cousin, not to be confused with John the disciple and author of this book, as…

  • Jesus, the Mark Version 

    Today I read the book of Mark. There is no Christmas story in the book of Mark. We just jump straight to cousin John carrying on out in the desert. He’s loud, he’s weird and giving everybody a dunk in river. He’s addressing sins and calling out everyone on their BS. Jesus shows up and…

  • The Greatest

    Last night I couldn’t sleep and ended up reading the book whole of Book Matthew. With all the talk of presidents and popes, it was time for a little bit of faith-checking.  Matthew is only 28 short chapters long. Reading it in one go shifted my perspective. There’s not very much of the Christmas story—just…

  • Big, Big House

    In John 14:2  Jesus says, ”In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” I think the main interpretation of this scripture is that heaven is really big, like a mansion and there’s lots of place for all…

  • The First Family

    A couple months ago, I was reading the fourth chapter of Genesis and I got tripped up on the part where Abel gets killed by his brother. My burning question was, “If Abel was in good standing with God, why wasn’t he protected or at least warned about the wrath of his brother?” Why didn’t…

  • American Idol

    I watched an Oregon Duck football game the other weekend and was startled at how young all the players and cheerleaders looked. Every decade I age, but average age of the college athlete stays the same. They are all at the pinnacle of human physical condition. Like the Greeks and Romans, our culture is obsessed…

  • A New Bedtime Prayer

    Growing up, I learned the bedtime prayer that starts “Now I lay me down to sleep. ” When it came time to teach my children something to say at night, I reconsidered. It has a nice rhythm and rhyme structure, but the words get a little dark talking about “if I should die before I…

  • ArmorAll

    There are certain Bible passages that are more popular than others because they distill truths from scriptures and are easy to remember. One if those is Ephesians 6:11-19 where Paul uses the metaphor of Roman armor to help visualize spiritual concepts. I have heard many sermons about this and even participated in a summer-long women’s…

  • Halfway Out

    I managed to listen to Jinger Duggar Voulo’s book “Becoming Free Indeed” while being a stay-at-home mom this week. Billed as a tell-all book, it barely covers any of the behind-the-scenes of the Duggar household, but instead is focused on being a takedown of Bill Gothard’s Institute of Basic Life Principles. The audiobook is read…

  • How to make Sense of the Bible

    Every year, there’s a bunch of folks who set out to read the Bible cover-to-cover in a year, but often don’t make it. They start out in Genesis, and get through creation and the flood. It’s rough, but kind of interesting. Exodus is exciting with Moses and his miracles, but then they hit Leviticus. Ugh,…