The Big Story of the Bible

Hi, and welcome to this Thursday edition of Our Daily Bread. I'm Kirsten Holmberg, and I hope you enjoy today's devotional reading that I titled The Big Story of the Bible. When Colin opened the box of stained glass pieces he'd purchased, instead of finding the fragments he'd ordered for a project, he discovered intact, whole windows. He sleuthed out the windows' origin and learned they'd been removed from a church to protect them from World War II bombings.

Colin marveled at the quality of work and how the fragments formed a beautiful picture. If I'm honest, there are times when I open particular passages of the Bible, such as chapters containing lists of genealogies, and I don't immediately see how they fit within the bigger picture of Scripture. Such is the case with Genesis 11, a chapter that contains a repetitive cadence of unfamiliar names and their families, such as Shem, Shelah, Eber, Nahir, and Terah. I'm often tempted to gloss over these sections and skip to a part that contains something that feels familiar and fits more easily into my window of understanding of the Bible's narrative. Since all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful, the Holy Spirit can help us better understand how a fragment fits into the whole, opening our eyes to see, for example, how Shelah is related to Abram, the ancestor of David, and, more importantly, Jesus. He delights in surprising us with the treasure of a perfectly intact window, where even the smaller parts reveal the story of God's mission throughout the Bible.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional Scripture reading is from Genesis 11, verses 26 through 32. After Terah lived seventy years, he became the father of Abram, Nahir, and Haran. This is the account of Terah's family line. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahir, and Haran, and Haran became the father of Lot.

While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans in the land of his birth. Abram and Nahir both married. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahir's wife was Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive. Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

Terah lived two hundred and five years, and he died in Haran. Let's pray. Father God, thank you for being the master craftsman of the Bible and all of history. Please help us to see you and your work more clearly. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.