Bible In One Year Day 6 ( Genesis 12 -13, Job 1-2, Proverbs 1:1-7)

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Commentary on the Book of Job 

Saint Joseph Edition The New American Bible 

Job is pious and upright, richly endowed in his own person and in domestic prosperity, suffers a sudden and complete reversal of fortune.  He loses his property and his children and a disease afflicts his body and sorrow oppresses his soul. 

Nevertheless Job does not complain against God.  When some friends visit him to condole with him, Job protests his innocence and does not understand why he is afflicted.  He curses the day of his birth and longs for death to bring an end to his sufferings.

Job Ridiculed by his Wife   (De La Tour)

Day 6: Trust in the Lord 

A Commentary
The Life of a Nomad The Great Adventure: Session 4 Patriarchs Part 1 
Understanding the Scriptures - The Didache Series (Chapter 5)

Terah has three sons, Abram, Nahor, and Haran.  By the time Abram was born his family is living in Ur, an ancient city in Mesopotamia.  All the sons grew up and married.  Haran died young leaving behind a son named Lot.  Terah seems to have raised his grandson Lot and his uncle Abram developed a close relationship with him.   When Terah decides to take his family away from Ur, Scripture tells us only that "they went forth together from Ur to go into the land of Canaan."  But they stopped and settled in Haran before they got to Canaan.  Terah dies and Abram is about 75 years old when he hears the call from God "Go forth out of thy country, and from thy father's house..." Gen 12:1 

So Abram does what God asks and takes his wife Sarai and Lot his brother's son and they travel to the land of Caanan.  Here God speaks to Abram, "To thy seed will I give this land."  Gen 12:7. This is the first of three promises God will make to Abram.  This one, the promise of land and a nation will be fulfilled many chapters later with the covenant made with Moses. 

Abraham Sistine Chapel (Michelangelo) 

Life of a nomad is difficult. Famine hits the land and Abram and Sarai and the family travel to Egypt to survive.  While there Abram asks his wife to say that she is his sister so that the Egyptians will not kill him so that they can "have her" as their own.  

Well Pharaoh decided to take Sarai as his own and God sent his wrath upon Pharaoh.  Not Abram interestingly.  But we should all be thankful that God doesn't send his wrath upon us when we sin.  Thank goodness for God's mercy.   

Anyway Pharaoh discovers that Sarai is actually Abram's wife and banishes Abram and his family from Egypt.   

Abram takes the family, which includes Lot, out of Egypt to the country about the Jordan.  Abram and Lot amicably divide the land of the area between themselves.  Abram lives in the land of Canaan and Lot in Sodom.  

God speaks to Abrams again reiterating that first promise of land and a nation, "Lift up thy eyes, and look from the place wherein thou now art, to the north and to the south, to the east and to the west.  All the land which thou sees, I will give to thee, and they seed for ever."  Gen 13:14-15

DAY 6 Miracles and Probability

CHALLENGE:  “By definition, miracles are improbable. In any given instance it’s very unlikely that a miracle will occur. The greater probability is the non-miraculous. We should accept the greatest probability, so we should not believe in miracles.”

 

DEFENSE:  This assumes we should refuse to believe a miracle has happened without looking at the evidence. Supernatural interventions are not improbable by definition. They could be happening all around us, but with such regularity that we don’t identify them as miracles.

 

Interventions we would recognize as miracles (water turning to wine, loaves multiplying, the dead rising) are rare, but this is no reason to conclude that they never happen or we should never believe in them.

 

For example, identical twins also are rare. For every thousand births, only about three will involve identical twins. But the fact that identical twins are rare does not mean they are not born or that we should disbelieve in them. It is true that, if we have no further knowledge, the likelihood is that a pregnancy will not involve identical twins. If we had to place a bet in advance, the safe bet would be against twins. But after the birth has happened, the thing to do is to look at the evidence and see whether identical twins were born.

 

Miracles may be less common than twins, but the same principles apply. If we are asked whether a miracle will occur at a particular place and time, and we know nothing else, then the odds are low. If we had to place a bet, the smart bet would be that one will not. But if we know more than that, we have to incorporate that information into our assessment. If a miracle is reported to have happened, we should ask what evidence there is that it did. Uncommon events do happen, and we need to look at the evidence.

 

Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist