Wednesday, Aug. 14
Genesis 4:1 – 5:28 Read it here

With Chapter 4 of Genesis, life starts to look kind of familiar. People marry, have children, and work.
We also see the first example here of people’s understanding of God, which ought to be a unifying force, instead leading to division.
The Bible doesn’t tell us why God preferred one offering over the other, just that he looked with favor on Abel’s offering and not on Cain’s. Cain became angry at this.
As in yesterday’s reading, we again see evil personified as a force trying to trip people up: “But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”
The readings from Proverbs that we are using in the daily meditations often reflect the same theme of the human being torn between two opposing forces, with one calling us to faithfulness and one to sin. Jesus will speak of the same thing, even incorporating it into the Lord’s Prayer with, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Paul will also address the struggle, and it will still be playing itself out in the drama of Revelation.
We’re only three days into reading the Bible, and the conflicts we’ll see all the way through are already taking place.

– Rev. Mark Fleming

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