I gain understanding from your
precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path. Your word is a lamp to my feet and
a light to my path.
Psalm
119:104, 105
We meet on
Thursday of most weeks. We are women of a certain age: wives, mothers,
grandmothers. We come from diverse backgrounds: businesswomen, teachers,
stay-at-homes, even a professional artist. We rotate houses: on sunny days we
sit out on the porch and visit, on cold, rainy days we drink tea in front of a
fire (and visit some more). We share life stories and prayer requests… and we
study the Bible.
What is even
more amazing is that in our small group—there are only six of us—are
represented five churches. Our common bond is the belief each of us holds
regarding the authority and inerrancy of the Bible. The motivation for our
get-togethers is our shared view that Scripture is the best commentary on
Scripture and our impetus is to study with others of like-mind.
Recently, our
study of the opening chapters of Genesis brought us to the Bible’s first
passage on marriage. As always, we did our homework and came together for
discussion. This time though, several of us admitted to being surprised by an unmistakable
feeling of grief as we studied verses we had heard all our lives. We realized
that to really look at what these verses say and think through how far our
culture—sadly, even the church—has come from God’s original good plan, is a
shocking, saddening revelation.
As the old
saying goes, “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”
This week I want to share with you some of the concepts we discovered
(re-discovered?) in our study. Maybe you too will be grieved, but from that you
may find new truth, even a new way forward. And if you think any of this is
worth passing on, you might share with daughters, grand-daughters or friends,
maybe over a cup of tea.
Nancy Shirah
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