Genesis 15 – The Lord’s Covenant With Abram

03_Abraham_Promise_JPEG_1024Michael Card (born April 11, 1957) is an American Christian singer-songwriter, musician, author, and radio host from Franklin, Tennessee. He is best known for his contributions in contemporary Christian music, which couple folk-style melodies and instrumentation with lyrics that stem from intensive study of the Bible.

Michael Card (nacido el 11 de abril 1957) es un cristiano cantautor, músico, escritor y locutor de radio estadounidense de Franklin, Tennessee. Él es mejor conocido por sus contribuciones en la música cristiana contemporánea, que se acoplan melodías de estilo popular y la instrumentación con letras que se derivan de un estudio intensivo de la Biblia.

Source: Genesis 15     Génesis 15 (Español)   

Genesis 15

The Lord’s Covenant With Abram

15 After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:

“Do not be afraid, Abram.
    I am your shield,[a]
    your very great reward.[b]

But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit[c] my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring[d] be.”

Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”

But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”

So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

10 Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11 Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the Lordsaid to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi[e]of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites,21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”

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BASS (Benefits Administrative Support System) Part 2

Magical Mystery Tour” is a song by the Beatles, the opening track and theme song for the album, double EP and TV film of the same name. Unlike the theme songs for their other film projects, it was not released as a single.

Magical Mystery Tour is an album by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as a double EP in the United Kingdom and an LP in the United States. Produced by George Martin, it includes the soundtrack to the 1967 film of the same name. The EP was issued in the UK on 8 December 1967 on the Parlophone label, while the Capitol Records LP release in the US occurred on 27 November and featured eleven tracks with the addition of songs from the band’s 1967 singles. The first release as an eleven-track LP in the UK did not occur until 1976.

Album: The Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour
Source: Jim’s Pawn Shop–Springfield, Mo
Price: $0.50

Our new BASS (Benefits Administrative Support System) ran software called HPDeskManager. This gave users a personal electronic in tray, out tray, calendar, and file cabinet. Users had a basic word processor called HPWord. Employees could send and receive e-mail with other benefit department employees at headquarters.

The calendar allowed people to view the schedules of other headquarters  Benefits employees. They could even use the system to reserve conference rooms. I encouraged employees to keep their calendar up-to-date on their computer. This way meetings could be scheduled online.

Taking BASS to the Field

SWBT had benefit offices in seven locations: St. Louis, Topeka, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. Headquarters employees communicated with these offices via landline phone or written document.

We designed a network of HP 3000 systems. Each benefit office received one. They dialed each other at pre-scheduled dial-up times, typically once an hour to exchange email between locations.

I went to each location with my co-worker Joel. We installed the mini computers and trained the employees. We taught an administrator at each location how to do backups. They would call Joel or me for help whenever they had a problem or question.

Employee Benefits was the first department within the company to have email communications between headquarters and field locations. Eventually we were able to communicate with other SWBT employees and of course the outside world.

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Genesis 12 – The Call of Abram

11_Abraham_Canaan_JPEG_1024Arabian Dance from The Nutcracker. The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (op. 71). The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.

Danza árabe de El Cascanueces. El cascanueces es un ballet en dos actos , original coreografía de Marius Petipa y Lev Ivanov , con una puntuación de Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky ( Op. 71 ) . El libreto es una adaptación de E.T.A. La historia de Hoffmann El cascanueces y el rey de los ratones .

Source: Genesis 12     Genesis 12 (Español)    

Genesis 12

The Call of Abram

12 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

“I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.[a]
I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you.”[b]

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring[c] I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.

Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

Abram in Egypt

10 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.11 As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. 12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”

14 When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. 15 And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. 16 He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.

17 But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. 18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” 20 Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.

 

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