Not just for the new year.

I know this is back to back posting for me but I really felt the need to post this before the new year started.

I am posting here and now my new year challenge.

Read the Bible.

Just read the Bible, not a book about the Bible, just the Bible.

Don’t start in the middle, do you start any other book in the middle? Start at the start.

Don’t get opinions on scriptures from theologists or wanna be theologists, just read the text.

My plan is to avoid reading what other people have to say about the Bible but what the Bible actually says for itself.

I am not making plans on finishing all of the Bible in one year and I don’t think you should either unless you need a goal for yourself  to actually do it. Just start at the beginning and take your time, that’s my plan.

All of this is spurred on by the lack of information about the Bible that the public has. We spurt off our random christian babble that we heard someone else say which doesn’t make any sense. I would never not check the facts on anything else that people say, why not check the facts about Scripture. I know this may be a foreign concept but sometimes people are wrong in what they say, how do we know unless we actually study the document they speak over?

If you haven’t done so already go check out Bill Maher’s “Documentary” Religulous. I am sure they didn’t put any interviews in the film with someone who actually knows what they are talking about but it will still open your eyes to how many people don’t even know about their own faith.

So let’s open our eyes, open our hearts, and open the Word and see what IT really says.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Bill Maher, New Year, Religulous, Scripture, The Bible, The Word

My wedding ring.

Monday was our first anniversary, we celebrated by buying a wedding ring. It is a little unconventional to receive your wedding ring a year into your marriage but any of you who know Shane and I and the circumstances around our wedding know that we are not conventional people.

Here is a recap the events surrounding our marriage  for those of you who were not there. Shane and I met online in May of 2008, we talked for several months over the phone and in August Shane drew a line in the sand. He didn’t think we should continue our talking relationship unless we were actually serious about being together and getting married. Both of us spent time in prayer and I knew he was the one the Father had sent for me, he was everything I had ever prayed for. Shane wasn’t convened with my confirmation and needed one of his own. One night we were talking and I quoted that line in Ruth to him “where you go I will go. where you stay I will stay. your people will be my people and your God my God.” He went silent. He had prayed a few nights earlier that if I was the one for him I would quote that line to him. So the next month I actually met Shane in person, yes, I knew he was my husband before I ever saw him, and things progressed from there. We were planning on getting married in May of the next year but in November we figured why wait. A few weeks before our wedding we decided to get married. The M.I.A. Hanukkah conference was going on in Nashville so we got married at the conference in one of the conference rooms on the last night of Hanukkah. It was kind of fitting because we got engaged during the feast of tabernacles a few months before.

So, about the ring. We ordered rings online that had our Ruth verse in Hebrew around the bands and used them in the ceremony. I thought that the ring I got was WAY too masculine and made my finger look fat so I have just been wearing my 1930′s engagement ring that Shane got off a guy on Craig’s list. I had been thinking about the ring I wanted and just figured it would be too much for us to afford right now, boy was I wrong.

Monday afternoon Shane tells me to go look for a wedding band. I had made plans to go grocery shopping so I was going to be out anyways. He said if I found something I liked for under $50 I could buy it, I laughed (Sarah’s seem to be in the habit of that). So I go to Walmart and take a peek in the jewelry cases to see if there is anything I actually like there and see my band. It’s slender, white gold, plain, just what I wanted. I ask the attendant if I can look at it. She takes it out and tells me the size, it’s my size. I put it on my finger and she tells me it looks perfect there. She tells me that she just put it out that morning, apparently someone had ordered it and had not picked it up and she felt the need to put it in the display case. I take off the ring and look at the price tag. It’s a yellow sticker with a black $28 on it. I smiled at her and said it was a good price, she smiled back and said it was indeed a good price. “Someone else’s loss is your gain.” she told me as we walked over to the register.

I paid $30 after taxes. Who’s laughing now?

Filed under: Uncategorized, anniversary, Feast of Tabernacles, Hanukkah, M.I.A., ring, wedding