The First Torah Portion

I was going to sit down this morning and tell you a lie. I was going to write about how my Torah reading this week (while good in itself) took all my time so I couldn't do my study for ladies' Bible class. I was going to say that having time to read and study double portions of scripture is a luxury for those who don't have to work, how it reminds me of how Tevye dreamed of having time to sit in the synagogue and pray, but only the rich could afford to spend their time like that. Then I thought of how many hours I spent this week with my injured ankle propped up watching stuff on Netflix. It's not that I didn't have time. It's how I chose to spend that time.

I started out last Saturday with new resolve. I wanted to not only READ the Torah portion, but WRITE it in my own handwriting. So I did. This practice of slowing down the scriptures lets you see all the words and allow them soak in at a different rate than they do when you simply read them. Listening to them aloud also gives a different perspective. This week, though, was for writing.

It took me all week to write out the five chapters and eight verses that started out the Torah reading for this year. Half the time, I was peaking ahead to see how many more pages, how many more columns I had to write. I got bogged down in the genealogy, even though it's pretty short and has some interesting plot twists.

I made a lot of mistakes, words I had to cross out because I wasn't paying attention, that I assumed I knew because I'd read these passages so many times.

I would have made a terrible scribe.

Unlike the scribes, though, I've given myself permission to make mistakes. They remind me of the quilters and artists who used to make one deliberate mistake in their work in order to illustrate that God is the only one who is perfect. While I hate to have scratched out words in my hand-written Bible portion, it is visible reminder that I'm not perfect except by the grace of God.

I don't expect to keep up with writing the Torah portion this year, but I am making the goal to write out at least the narrative portions. I think it would kill me to hand-write the Levitical laws and the census of Numbers. Does that make me lazy or realistic?

As I read over what I've written above, it comes across as very self-centered. In the midst of reading about the creation--how the entire universe (or universes, though I can't wrap my head around that one) fell off God's tongue tip, how he spoke worlds and solar systems and galaxies into existence, how he breathed life into what he had made--in the midst of all that, I chose to tell you about me.

That's because I am the center of the universe.

The same thing struck me about the creation account. All that God made is so vast, it makes my head ache to think about it too much. But the creation account, what is written in the first chapters of Genesis, place the earth and the garden in the very center of creation. The story revolves around one planet, one garden, one man and one woman.

When I tell my daughter about the day she was born, I leave out the extraneous stuff. The story doesn't include anything happening in other towns to other people. It's all about the two of us (with a couple of nods to her dad). I tell her about how cold it was, how the roads were iced and the snow was falling. I tell her about how I felt when, after hours of hard work, I finally held her and looked into her eyes for the first time. I can almost feel that rush of emotion again, just thinking about it.

The creation story in Genesis struck me the same way, like it's God' telling us, his children, about the day we were born. He left out a lot of details, but he told us the parts he knew we'd like to know. He centered the story around us, his children, because he loves us.

This week's Torah portion:

Genesis 6:9-11:32

Isaiah 53:55:5

Luke 1:1-80

Photo credit: Lawrie Cate via VisualHunt.com / CC BY