{"id":3496,"date":"2006-01-22T19:46:58","date_gmt":"2006-01-23T01:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2006\/01\/22\/the-gospel-according-to-my-birthday\/"},"modified":"2022-03-11T17:49:51","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T23:49:51","slug":"the-gospel-according-to-my-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2006\/01\/22\/the-gospel-according-to-my-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gospel According to My Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m sure this has been done somewhere<\/em> in the blogosphere before now, but I stole<\/span> appropriated the idea from emailed devotional of Berry Simpson, a Midland City Councilman and fellow church member. He decided to look up all the verses in the Bible that corresponded to his birthday, which happens to be June 23. So he went through Scripture and pulled out all the chapters 6 and verses 23 to see if they had anything special to tell him. According to his research, there were only 21 out of the 66 books that had a 6:23 and, frankly, he was a bit underwhelmed by what those 21 verses had to say, overall.<\/p>\n

I still think it’s an interesting exercise, but I decided to make it a little easier to carry out, so mine is limited to the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. My birthday is June 28 (close to Berry’s), and here are the verses that correspond to that month and day.<\/p>\n

Matthew 6:28:<\/p>\n

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ah. A propitious start, with a pronouncement from the Messiah himself. Although he surely understands that I’m the last<\/em> person he needs to caution about worrying about clothes, given my usual sartorial underachievement.<\/p>\n

Mark 6:28:<\/p>\n

…and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother.<\/em><\/p>\n

OK, this one creeps me out. It refers of course to the beheading of John the Baptist at the behest of the revolting queen Herodias, a world class harpy.<\/p>\n

Luke 6:28:<\/p>\n

...bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.<\/em><\/p>\n

Another one from Jesus. Um, this one’s a bit more meddlesome than the previous one, however.<\/p>\n

John 6:28:<\/p>\n

Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?<\/em>“<\/p>\n

An interesting question posed to Jesus by a crowd which followed him around the Sea of Galilee. As usual, the answer is more simple than we expect: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”<\/em><\/p>\n

What’s the real point of this exercise? Well, it’s whatever you want to read into it, but at the very least, it’s an interesting excuse to do a little Scriptural searching that you might not otherwise undertake. So give it a try (I’ve already confirmed that every day of the year will be found in at least one of the Gospels, so nobody gets shut out).<\/p>\n

Oh, and for a bonus, take a look at your birthday chapter and verse in the book of Revelation. I’d reveal mine to you, except I don’t have one. Chapter 6 has only 17 verses.<\/p>\n

Perhaps someone can point me to the Lost Verses of Revelation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an excuse to do a quick Bible study, as if you really need one. Excuse, that is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3496"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8622,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496\/revisions\/8622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}