Bible Verse Sunday #17 & St. Patrick's Day

Today's verse is the first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1. Verse is from ESVBible.org.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

The ESV Bible has this to say on the verse:

"Gen. 1:1 In the beginning. This opening verse can be taken as a summary, introducing the whole passage; or it can be read as the first event, the origin of the heavens and the earth (sometime before the first day), including the creation of matter, space, and time. This second view (the origin of the heavens and the earth) is confirmed by the NT writers’ affirmation that creation was from nothing (Heb. 11:3; Rev. 4:11). God created. Although the Hebrew word for “God,” ’Elohim, is plural in form (possibly to express majesty), the verb “create” is singular, indicating that God is thought of as one being. Genesis is consistently monotheistic in its outlook, in marked contrast to other ancient Near Eastern accounts of creation. There is only one God. The Hebrew verb bara’, “create,” is always used in the OT with God as the subject; while it is not always used to describe creation out of nothing, it does stress God’s sovereignty and power. Heavens and the earth here means “everything.” This means, then, that “In the beginning” refers to the beginning of everything. The text indicates that God created everything in the universe, which thus affirms that he did in fact create it ex nihilo (Latin “out of nothing”). The effect of the opening words of the Bible is to establish that God, in his inscrutable wisdom, sovereign power, and majesty, is the Creator of all things that exist."

In church today, the pastor spoke about how Jesus healed in a blind man in Luke 18, I believe, and how it was his effective faith in Jesus that healed him. In the High School service, the youth pastor discussed some of the Beatitudes, as detailed in Matthew 5.

Today is also St. Patrick's Day, a holiday of Roman Catholic origin celebrating the life of St. Patrick. St. Patrick was originally a boy in Britain who was kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland. There he prayed to God frequently each day, and he eventually got back home. There, he studied and became a bishop, before returning to Ireland to spread the gospel there.

For St. Patrick's Day, I visited my grandmother and wore a green sweater vest over my white dress shirt. I discussed my writing and other things with my grandmother, and ate lunch there. Upon returning home with my dad and sister, I mowed the lawn, worked on my graphic novel script, and ate a dinner of Irish Stew (my mom left the beer out of the recipe). It was a good stew, with carrots, potatoes, garlic, and lamb. In short, I loved it.

Image courtesy of examiner.com