Sheila Deeth's 5-Minute Story Series Introduces Characters of Bible's Book of Genesis...

Genesis People

By Sheila Deeth

I have a confession for my readers about this book. I learned more from this book about the people living right at the beginning of the world than I've learned in any other book, including the Bible. If you're like me, as a Christian, you started reading Genesis in the King James Version...way back when...

After the Creation and then about Adam and Eve, it got harder to understand. So even though I have read it, I never really "tried" to put the people together in my mind as I would fictional characters. Yet, that is exactly what we need to do, isn't it? Well, Sheila Deeth has done an exceptional job for us. She's created a series where she introduces each character and tells a story from his or her perspective!

Sure, it a great learning book for children... But if you're a Christian of any age, who is willing to admit that you never took the time to go back to that Old Testament King James Version to try and understand it better, then I recommend you consider this book not only for your children...but plan on learning more yourself! I guarantee that having the perspective of the individual character will help fix these individuals better in your mind and will help you build a better understanding of the family relationships as well..

http://evolvingcreation.com
Adam. Genesis 2 There was once a man called Adam
 who lived in a beautiful place called the Garden
 of Eden. The weather was always warm in Eden.
The rain was just a gentle mist.
 The ground was soft and covered with grass
. There were seeds and fruits and berries for
Adam to eat as he walked around.
And there were no dangerous plants,
nothing that could sting, and nothing
 that could make him sick.
There were no scary places where Adam
 could get hurt. And all the animals were
 friendly because they all had enough to eat.
~~~

Sometimes God Incidents happen! [A number of years ago I heard the word coincidence referred to as God incidents...I liked that so much] so when I started reading Deeth's book, I had an immediate flashback--a God Incident, to the book I had just reviewed earlier this week--A Vision of Angels--where a young boy had been taught in school that Christians, Jews and Muslims all worshiped the same God. When he got home, he began to ask questions, like, "Then why don't we have just one religion?" Sheila's book would have been able to help provide him (and the world) answers!

As I read Deeth's 5-minute stories, it was quite easy to see the break off as children left home and moved away, sometimes not too willingly... But there was a basic love, forgiveness and the desire for peace that guided the family always... 

Why that has changed over time is another book or two (LOL) but for me, Genesis People certainly helped me envision the way that the break offs might have felt like the individuals were now on their own with the need for a new religion--but, was there?

Abram’s God was the one true God of creation,  the God

 who made the world and sent the flood and 

rescued Noah. But the people who lived near Abram 

had grown bored with

 the old stories and the old rules. They changed the

 stories every time they told them, adding new gods

 and goddesses, and wonderful battles

 and magic and wizards and monsters and dragons

 and wands. Soon their stories were so exciting

 they got scared of their own made-up gods. 

Then they made statues for their gods to live in. 

They sacrificed food and animals, sometimes even

 their own children, in front of the statues, 

so their gods wouldn’t hurt them.

~~~ 

There is some duplication, as when the story is from the

perspective of Cain versus Abel. This helps greatly to tie

the individuals together and to better understand how each might

have felt about what happened...

Then there is a short suggested prayer to recap and thank God

for what was covered in the story.

Depending on the age of your children, you may read one or two

stories to the younger children and allow the older ones to read 

as they wish...Or you can do as I did, and read it all at once! It's

an easy and fun read since the stories have been written in story

tale form...

Abram. One day God sent three strangers to visit his friend Abram in the desert. Abram was sitting in the doorway of his tent when he saw the strangers walk out from under the trees. He had no idea where they’d come from but he invited them to rest and share a meal. That was how Abram always greeted strangers, so he could make them his friends. Abram sat outside the tent with the strangers while his servants brought food out to them. “Where’s your wife?” the strangers asked, and Abram said she was busy. “She’ll be busier next year,” said the strangers, “when the baby’s born.” Then Abram’s wife laughed in the tent because she was old and she had no idea she was pregnant. Abram wondered if the strangers were angels from God; otherwise how could they have known something so special? 
                                             ~~~

The book contains 50 different stories center on those mentioned as well as Joseph, Sarai, Seth, Cain and Abel and all of the others as they were born, married, and had children. And then relocated to start their lives...BTW, it was easy to compare the map of Canaan from that time to see the land is now divided...and where the families 

relocated...

So Terah gathered together his wife and his oldest son and his oldest son’s wife and his little grandson. Then he packed up his tents and animals and servants and they all set off for Canaan, where the grass was green and the rain was soft and the sun shone all the time. Halfway there, though, Terah decided to stop. He’d found a fairly quiet, fairly comfortable place. It had grass and rain and sunshine, and he could be happy there. If God was still telling him to go somewhere else, well, God wasn’t speaking very loudly and Terah couldn’t hear him. 
One day Terah’s son came to him and said that God was sending him to Canaan. 

“That’s where God was sending me,” said Terah. But his son said, “It’s where he’s sending me now.” Terah’s son took his wife and his nephew and all his servants and animals. Poor rich Terah was left all on his own, with one son still living in Ur, one dead, and the other one on his way to Canaan. Then Terah wished he hadn’t decided to stop listening to God. But he was too old and too settled to travel again. Instead he just thanked God for his blessings and asked God to look after all his family. 

~~~

The author has added a section of "Did you Know?" that I especially enjoyed! Here's a "taste" of it:

True science and true religion can never be at odds with one another. How could they be? Both are attempts to understand the God who formulated the laws of science that rule our universe, which man has struggled mightily to comprehend and codify. Unfortunately, increased understanding has led some to discount the Bible and the events it contains.

Let me know if you learned something new like I did! It is well worth it for your children, but isn't it great that Sheila Deeth just might have helped your understanding of the Bible as well!?! Highly Recommended!


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About this author

Sheila Deeth grew up in the UK and has a Bachelors and Masters in mathematics from Cambridge University, England. She moved to the States with her husband and three sons in 1996 and now lives near Portland, Oregon, where she enjoys reading, writing, drawing, telling stories, meeting her neighbors' dogs on the green, and running a local writers' group.

Sheila's first novel, Divide by Zero, was released in July 2012 from http://stonegarden.net. Her spiritual speculative novellas have been published by Gypsy Shadow, available fromhttp://gypsyshadow.com/SheilaDeeth.html . She has had short stories published in two anthologies from http://secondwindpublishing.com . And her Bible stories, gift books and picture-books can be found at http://www.lulu.com/sdeeth .

Sheila writes book reviews for NightsandWeekends.com, Poetic Monthly magazine and Summit Book Reviews, as well as regularly posting reviews to Amazon, Barnes and noble, Goodreads, Gather, Lunch and Shelfari. Find her on one of her blogs or websites via http://www.sheiladeeth.blogspot.com.
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