Hi and welcome to this Thursday edition of Our Daily Bread. I'm Kirsten Holmberg, and I hope you

enjoy today's devotional reading that I titled The Big Story of the Bible. When Colin opened the box

of stained glass pieces he'd purchased, instead of finding the fragments

he'd ordered for a project, he discovered intact, whole windows.

He sleuthed out the window's origin and learned they'd been removed from a church to protect

them from World War II bombings.

Colin marveled at the quality of work and how the fragments formed a beautiful picture.

If I'm honest, there are times when I open particular passages of the Bible, such as chapters

containing lists of genealogies, and I don't immediately see how they fit within

the bigger picture of scripture. Such is the case with Genesis 11, a chapter that contains a

repetitive cadence of unfamiliar names and their families, such as Shem, Shela, Iber, Neher, and Tara.

I'm often tempted to gloss over these sections and skip to a part that contains something

that feels familiar and fits more easily into my window of understanding of the Bible's

narrative. Since all scripture is God-breathed and is useful,

the Holy Spirit can help us better understand how a fragment fits into the whole, opening our

eyes to see, for example, how Shella is related to Abram, the ancestor of David, and, more

importantly, Jesus. He delights in surprising us with the treasure

of a perfectly intact window, where even the smaller parts reveal the story of God's mission

throughout the Bible. Today's Our Daily Bread Devional scripture reading is from Genesis chapter 11, verses 26 through 32.

After Tara lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Neher, and Heron. This is the account of Tara's family line.

Tara became the father of Abram, Neher, and Heron, and Heron.

And Heron became the father of Lot.

...