The story of the Tower of Babel may not be a text that we would think of for Advent, but it tells us again the story that is at the heart of Christian faith. Humankind is in prideful rebellion against God and what we have seen thus far in Genesis is when that is the case there is only violence and harm that is coming. So, God in his grace acts in his commitment to his creation and in love for humanity. And what do we find at the center of the story, but what we find at the very center of Christianity: God comes down!!!

The story of Noah reveals profound truths about God's existence, His care for creation, and His unwavering covenant. God's covenant with Noah highlights His intimate and relational promise to sustain the natural order and humanity. Noah’s story also mirrors the creation and fall, foreshadowing our redemption through Jesus Christ.

Noah may seem like an odd story to start advent with, but what is advent but the observation that God remembers his promise to crush the head of the serpent, to deal with sin and that he has done so in Jesus. It is a remembering Christ's first coming and a sitting in the longing for his second. "But God remembered" is at the heart of the Noah story. And that central fact is what distinguishes this story from the other Ancient Near Eastern Flood stories and it is literally at the heart of the story, as both a big-picture thematic chiasm and the detailed numeric chiasm points us to Genesis 8:1. "But God remembered".

The Noah and flood story are great stories for children, but they are also great stories for us because they are true. Yet, the story also makes for one of the reasons Christianity isn't believed. A flood of this proportions just seems, well, too supernatural. It's for this same reason that many Christians are set on proving it happened. Yet both of these positions are wanting certitude while the Bible is inviting faith.

Noah and the flood. 3 whole chapters of the first 9 chapters of the Bible. What we've been seeing is that these first chapters of Genesis are laying foundations for how we understand God, others, the world about us and our place in it all. But three chapters about a Christian truth that people find offensive - God as judge. Yet, at the beginning of this story we have three key ideas that we have to keep in mind: 1. Sin is worse than we think, (2) God is the only truly just judge and (3) Grace is on the table.

Genealogies, "accounts", are the chapter headings of Genesis. Even so, their significance can be lost on us. Genesis 5 tells the Genealogy from Adam to Noah in the line of Seth. While it stands as incredibly different then genealogies we would tell (boy they were old!!), it is packed with meaning and encouragement to find life in the offspring to come and in calling on the name of the Lord. It stands in stark contrast to the genealogy of Cain in chapter 4. Pitted against each other, we are to find our life and our hope in the family of the Lord and our hope in him.

Cain and Abel. One of the more well-known stories from early in the Bible. It continues the Adam and Eve narrative and it concludes the real beginning of Genesis. Taken with Genesis 3, it tells us very clearly that the progeny of Adam and Eve were in the same sinful state as Adam and Eve after their fall into sin. But it leaves us with a question: will we walk in the way of Cain who defied God's corrective word to him, or will we "call on the name of the Lord." Those are the two options. One leads to life, the other to death. And as the Scriptures tells us again and again, all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.

There are 150 Psalms. They cover the gamut of the human condition, but how are we to understand them? What would God have know so that this very broad book can guide our understanding of Him in our lives? See Psalm 1 and its partner Psalm 2.....