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Stories from the Verse
Con Verse Lea
Chapter 71: Hastings 250
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Beam 151
As Lauren swallowed her water and stepped back onto her perch, she realized once again just how much these people didn’t know, how much they had to learn, how daunting was her task. Clearing her throat, she continued.
“Genesis is the first book of the Bible, the beginning of the story. The word itself means to begin something, and the book begins with the beginning of everything. Before we reach that, though, you probably can see some numbers mixed among the words. What is now hundreds, maybe thousands, of years ago, your ancestors organized the Bible, putting the books in this order, and they also divided each book into chapters, some of the shortest a single chapter and the longest one a hundred fifty, so that those of us who read the book can find our place and talk about where we found things we read. Then they divided the chapters into what we call verses, sometimes sentences, sometimes poetic lines, sometimes fragments of ideas, again to make it easier to find what we want. The beginning of the text here is Genesis, chapter one, verse one, which for convenience we just call Genesis one one. If, though, I said I wanted you to read Exodus nineteen two, you would find the book of Exodus, which is the second book, the book after Genesis, and you would look at the chapter numbers which are usually copied to the tops of the pages and page through until you found chapter nineteen, and then you would scan down until you came to verse two. That’s how we find things in the Bible, and it’s important, because the Bible has been printed many times, and it has been translated from the original ancient languages into hundreds of languages and even many different versions, different ways of translating the words into our language. So we might find the same parts on different pages, and the wording might sometimes be different, but by using the chapters and verses we can all find the same place, the same ideas.”
She looked over the crowd, hoping they were still with her.
“Well, you’ll get it as we use it. Let’s get to what the book says; that’s the important part. The first words of Genesis, like the first words I read from John, are ‘in the beginning’. So when John says in the beginning, he is pointing us to Genesis, to the creation of the world. So as Genesis continues, see if you can read with me, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, let there be light, and there was light.”
Pausing, she again scanned the crowd before she continued. “What I want you to notice here is that God spoke. He said, let there be light, and by speaking He caused there to be light. If you scan down the page, you will see that repeatedly we are told,” and she scanned the page herself, “and God said, and each time He said something, something new was created. You’ll see it in verse six, verse nine, eleven, fourteen, and a few more times. Now, let’s go back to John.”
Unsure how to do this, she decided that she should try to help them.
“About three quarters of the way through the book you’ll come to the part we call the New Testament. The first five books in it are rather long, and they begin with Matthew, then Mark, then Luke, then John. If you reach Acts, you’ve gone too far. If you find John, you want to work back to the first page of John, and find John one one. If you’ve found it, you should help your neighbors find it.”
She waited through the noise until it settled.
“Good, I’m betting everyone is there. As I said before, it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being. So John is telling us that when God created the world by speaking, what He spoke was Jesus, God creating the world through Jesus.”
She decided that this was a lot, and closed her Bible. “That’s a lot to digest for now. We’ll get together again next week--seven days from today--and read more from John. Meanwhile, you might want to read more from John yourself, and maybe more from Genesis, to help be ready for next week’s gathering. As always, if you have questions, find me.”
She looked over the group once more, then stepped down and retreated into her nest, where she laid on her back and stared up at the roof.
“Thank you, Lord,” she said. “I hope I did well enough. Use that, and prepare me to continue.”
She closed her eyes and dozed a bit, worn from the effort.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #472: Versers Vanish. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
