Luke 1 "Thy Word is a Lamp Unto My Feet!"

I'm almost ashamed to post realizing that I haven't posted in two months.  It's not that we haven't been inspired, my sweet mom and I, it was just that time of the year where obligations ate up my time....  Speaking of eating, one gobbler has been my creation of another blog entitled "Gene-Erecipes"   http://gene-erecipes.blogspot.com/  following my desire to cook through our family cookbook in one year.  It was through this blog that I realized I am a goalie and, like a goalie, I must guard against all those attacks that keep me from winning the race.  The initial goal of Onion Skin Garden was to share the bounty of the bible studies my mother and I have, but it seems like the more "organized" we get about studying, the less the flow becomes.

So we want to make this more interactive.  Mom & I decided to forget about Beth Moore and the various published studies we've tried to do together (sorry, Beth!) and just read the Bible together in a year in the same way that I'm cookin up physical food - we asked the Lord to stew his spiritual food in us.  After all, one of my mother's favorite "WOW" (words of wisdom) to us growing up was "what's happening in the physical is happening in the spiritual."

The interactive part is that I do hope that all you inspired readers of this blog will contribute.  This will be an open forum for your insights into that particular scripture.  I know that most of you have your own daily readings or devotions that you do, so we are just going to focus on one part of our reading (we do both an Old & New Testament reading to get through in a year).  If you want to join us, we'd love it - in any case, please follow.

I can't tell you the number of times I've read Luke.  Every Christmas at least some of it.  But today I peeled off another layer of blessing as I reread this 1st chapter.  By some strange direction (could it be the Holy Spirit?) the Old Testament reading was Numbers 8 which dealt with the Levites being set apart for the priesthood and what a picture of Christ this was - the firstfruit of all creation, the firstborn...the high priest, the sacrifice.  This following a discussion yesterday with my daughter about philosophy and how Descartes in his Methods proved the existence of God - at least in the mind.  I can't begin to explain his reasoning but I gathered that because we see the shadow of something that something must exist.  The Old Testament is a shadow.  The shadow of the New - which is incidentally why everyone who reads the book of Revelation is blessed - the source of the shadow is revealed.  The firstfruit of all creation, the firstborn, the high priest, the temple, the sacrifice, the law....all shadows of the heavenly, shadows of God's plan, shadows of Christ himself....allow me to rephrase Descartes, "He thinks, therefore I am."

So in reading the Old Testament we need remember that we are just seeing a shadow in the physical of what has happened in the spirit.  Hebrews 10:1 says, "For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and NOT the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect."  But these shadows were cast for us to RECOGNIZE the shadow's source when it came, continuing in vs. 11, "and every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: but this man, after he had offered ONE sacrifice for sins forever, sat down...for by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified."  So mom's WOW speaks truth but may be better said, "what's happening in the physical has been cast from the spiritual."

Luke 1 begins with the conception of John the Baptist.  His father Zechariah who, according to vs. 8 was "executing the priest's office" (the shadow) is visited by the angel Gabriel to be informed that his post-menopausal wife will bear a child who, "shall go before him [the source of the shadow, Christ] in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."  Well how can we EVER be prepared for the Lord?  The shadow didn't save.  But the source, Christ himself, does.

Then Gabriel visited Mary with the news that she would be "overshadowed" with the power of the Highest to conceive the very Son of God.  Amazing Grace.  She reacted just like Zechariah, "how can this be?"  Doesn't this sound like us?  I know I ask it all the time as I peel that layer of pungent onion skin away and say with tears, "how can this be?  I don't understand, Lord!  Help me with my unbelief.  Let me SEE you."  Like Zechariah I am dumbfounded.  Until I realize the truth of Luke 1:37, "for with God nothing shall be impossible," and by the overshadowing of the power from on high, I can say, "be it done unto me according to the word." Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me.