Below are the chapters to read this week if you’re following along in my Bible in a year schedule, divided into morning and evening readings. Follow along any way you want: you can just do the evening reading, flip the morning and evening, or read it all. Whatever works for you and your schedule! It doesn’t have to be Bible in a Year for everyone.
This week we finish Mark and Deuteronomy and move on to Luke and Joshua.
Monday, July 1 Morning: Ecclesiastes 3, Mark 16 Evening: Deuteronomy 30
Tuesday, July 2 Morning: Ecclesiastes 4, Luke 1 Evening: Deuteronomy 31
Wednesday, July 3 Morning: Ecclesiastes 5, Luke 1 Evening: Deuteronomy 32
Thursday, July 4 Morning: Ecclesiastes 5, Luke 3 Evening: Deuteronomy 33
Friday, July 5 Morning: Ecclesiastes 6, Luke 4 Evening: Deuteronomy 34
Saturday, July 6 Morning: Ecclesiastes 7, Luke 5-6 Evening: Joshua 1
Sunday, July 7 Morning: Ecclesiastes 8, Luke 7-8 Evening: Joshua 2
Below are the chapters to read this week if you’re following along in my Bible in a year schedule, divided into morning and evening readings. Follow along any way you want: you can just do the evening reading, flip the morning and evening, or read it all. Whatever works for you and your schedule! It doesn’t have to be Bible in a Year for everyone.
After this week, Bible in a year is halfway done! This week we finish Proverbs and start Ecclesiastes, continuing with the wisdom books. We’re also nearly finished the Pentateuch.
Monday, June 24 Morning: Proverbs 27, Mark 7 Evening: Deuteronomy 23
Tuesday, June 25 Morning: Proverbs 28, Mark 8 Evening: Deuteronomy 24
Wednesday, June 26 Morning: Proverbs 29, Mark 9 Evening: Deuteronomy 25
Thursday, June 27 Morning: Proverbs 30, Mark 10 Evening: Deuteronomy 26
Friday, June 28 Morning: Proverbs 31, Mark 11 Evening: Deuteronomy 27
Saturday, June 29 Morning: Ecclesiastes 1, Mark 12-13 Evening: Deuteronomy 28
Sunday, June 30 Morning: Ecclesiastes 2, Mark 14-15 Evening: Deuteronomy 29
Below are the chapters to read this week if you’re following along in my Bible in a year schedule, divided into morning and evening readings. Follow along any way you want: you can just do the evening reading, flip the morning and evening, or read it all. Whatever works for you and your schedule! It doesn’t have to be Bible in a Year for everyone.
This week we move from the first gospel, Matthew, to the second, Mark. The plan is to read all four in a row.
Monday, June 17 Morning: Proverbs 20, Matthew 26 Evening: Deuteronomy 16
Tuesday, June 18 Morning: Proverbs 21, Matthew 27 Evening: Deuteronomy 17
Wednesday, June 19 Morning: Proverbs 22, Matthew 28 Evening: Deuteronomy 18
Thursday, June 20 Morning: Proverbs 23, Mark 1 Evening: Deuteronomy 19
Friday, June 21 Morning: Proverbs 24, Mark 2 Evening: Deuteronomy 20
Saturday, June 22 Morning: Proverbs 25, Mark 3-4 Evening: Deuteronomy 21
Sunday, June 23 Morning: Proverbs 26, Mark 5-6 Evening: Deuteronomy 22
In 1989, Rain Man, a movie starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, won the Oscar for Best Picture and Hoffman won for Best Actor in a Leading Role, playing Raymond, an autistic-savant. Long before autism was widely recognized, Raymond showed that those with autism have amazing talents, personalities, and human dignity just like anyone else. In the movie, Raymond wins the affection of his selfish, arrogant brother Charlie, played by Cruise, who was initially only interested in Raymond because of his inheritance.
In one of the movie’s more well-known scenes, Raymond performs what in another context might be considered a miracle. You can watch the 1 ½ minute clip here or read my summary below it.
In the clip, a waitress drops most of a box of toothpicks on the floor and in just a couple of seconds, Raymond counts that 246 of them scattered on the floor (he also counts three groups of 82). At this point of the movie, Charlie still sees Raymond as someone he has to put up while he chases down his inheritance. The waitress says the box had 250 toothpicks, so Charlie says Raymond guessed “pretty close” because he just wants to leave. But when the waitress says, “there’s 4 left in the box”, Charlie realizes something amazing has just happened. It wasn’t a guess.
It’s easy to be skeptical of miracles, or to choose to ignore them, but some of the Bible’s miracles aren’t much different than Raymond counting toothpicks at super-human speed. We can’t explain why some people count faster than others, or run faster than others, or have photographic memories while others don’t, yet if we call something a “miracle,” many people will demand an explanation. Other very abnormal things we just take for granted.
One miracle is recorded in Matthew 21:18-19, which says: “In the morning, as [Jesus] was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once.” This tree was eventually going to wither anyway, so all Jesus did was change the speed of a natural process. True, Raymond was special because of his own speed, and Jesus controlled the speed of something other than himself, but still part of what makes it a miracle is the speed.
If the speed of a natural process, like counting or the growth of plants, can be variable and manipulated, why not also the direction of the process? In Mark’s gospel, the word “immediately” appears in at least 5 references to healing miracles[1]. The word “immediately” means the speed was part of the miracle. Jesus not only healed a paralytic in Mark chapter 2, but the paralytic “immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all,”[2] without months or years of physical rehabilitation therapy. From everyday experience, we know that different people recover from injury at different rates, yet why do we demand an explanation when its immediate? If we don’t know what process took place to make this man a paralytic, why is it hard to believe that process could go backwards, and quickly? It’s partly a miracle of degree, not of kind.
Of course, we shouldn’t believe every miracle: some are mere hoaxes, and some signs are done in opposition to God. But also, we should not be too quick to dismiss the possibility of miracles we didn’t expect or can’t explain. And while Rain Man does not claim to be based on a true story[3], the Bible does. And Jesus, the one who could control the speed and direction of what we consider “natural” processes, claimed to be the God who put those processes to work in the first place.
“As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.” – Ecclesiastes 11:5
[1] See Mark 1:42, 2:12, 5:29, 5:42, and 10:52 [2] Mark 2:12 [3] The movie was based on a novel, but Raymond’s abilities were modeled on a real person named Kim Peek, who you can read more about at this link. https://allthatsinteresting.com/kim-peek-real-rain-man
Marlboro Man was a character used to advertise Marlboro cigarettes starting in 1954. He became a cliché of a rugged man, often shown on horseback with a cowboy hat and some rope, confidently smoking a cigarette, and was portrayed by several different actors until 1999. However, the origin of this famous ad campaign isn’t as well known.
Before the manly Marlboro Man manifested in 1954, Marlboro was sold as a feminine cigarette, with a red-colored filter at the tip. Ads had phrases like “Ivory Tips Protect the Lips,” and touted that lipstick on the cigarette wouldn’t matter since it was red anyway. But later, when the health risks of cigarette smoking came to light, Philip Morris & Co. wanted to sell Marlboro to men on the idea that filters made smoking “safer.” However, given Marlboro’s feminine image – created through advertising – Philip Morris had to overcome that connotation, so the red tips were removed, and Marlboro Man was born as a way to sell Marlboro cigarettes to men concerned about lung cancer and other health risks.
Marlboro Man ad on a Warsaw, Poland building.
With hindsight, we know that filters don’t make smoking safer. Ironically, and sadly, five different men who appeared in Marlboro advertisements died of smoking-related diseases, earning Marlboro cigarettes the nickname “cowboy killers.”[1]
Also with hindsight, we can see the massive power of advertising to shape our perceptions. The Marlboro Man campaign is considered in the ad industry to be one of the best of all time, changing a “feminine” product into one of stereotypical masculinity almost overnight. But the campaign also shows us that “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death”, as Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 say. In this case, it was very literal death in this world.
To make Philip Morris money, the ads declared that smoking was not a “way to death,” but that it was “right to a man” to be like the Marlboro Man. It’s not entirely unlike the line “the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” which was spoken by Kevin Spacey’s character in the 1995 movie, The Usual Suspects. This line was a paraphrase of a line at least as old as the 1850’s.[2]
I recently heard a sermon where the pastor said, “the culture is trying to kill you,” and I don’t think it was an exaggeration. Just as Marlboro ads first convinced people it was a feminine product, then turned on a dime to convince people it was a masculine product, without any real change to what was being sold, we’re all bombarded by dangerous messages every day, and many will only be seen in the broader culture as dangerous with the benefit of hindsight. Smoking used to be considered normal.
I’m not writing this to condemn smokers, because we all have our bad habits, but to spotlight the importance of an eternal perspective. Any culture is limited to the perspective of its leaders in that time and circumstance, and the pull of peer pressure is real. Every culture in this world has “a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death,” but also every culture needs the gospel more than it needs effective advertising campaigns.
Therefore, as the apostle Peter wrote in 1 Peter 3:8-9 – “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.”
Marlboro Man needs the good news of the gospel, not condemnation.
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 