I found today’s reading a hard one. Partly because I am tired, partly because I have had a bad afternoon but mostly because it just didn’t speak to me.
I don’t particularly want to know exactly how to kill an animal and burn its flesh so that it is wasted so that it’s ‘aroma can be pleasing to God’. I also don’t want to know how Aaron and his sons skim off the top of the offerings getting their share of the grain.
The New Testament reading was okay. But I have heard the story of the paralytic more times that I can count beginning with a skit when I was 6 years old and in Vacation Bible School.
I liked the part in Psalms from 26-28 especially how God was going to put all those who ‘gloat’ over my troubles to shame. But I’ve heard that before too.
And can I say, I am beginning to think that the young man that Proverbs was written WAS simple. How many times do you have to tell them to ‘stay away from the wicked woman’?
I poked around some on the internet trying to find a good sermon to plop down. None seemed to do the trick.
Ever had one of those days?
My favorite book heroine, Anne Shirley Blythe of Anne of Green Gables calls these days “Jonah Days”. There it is again. A Bible reference.
So I ditched the stated scripture and headed for the book of Jonah. Oh, not the whale part. That was well covered in Veggie Tales and a hundred other Vacation Bible School stories. I went to the last part. Chapters 3 & 4. This is where my temper is right now.
The question before me is: am I going to be like Jonah and be grouchy when things are going right for someone else but I am having a hard time. And a hard time with diddly stuff, like no thank yous for clean clothes or my workout partner standing me up. What is that compared with the truly awful stuff?
My solution was to apologize to Don for my snapping, get Matthew a chocolate milk, set the table and have all of us sit down to a good dinner and then go to bed. Things always look better in the morning.
May your Jonah days come at 10 PM when bedtime is 10:15.
We are definitely into some difficult passages to trudge through. In reading today I kept thinking about how much work was involved in being forgiven for sin. Would I take sin more seriously . . . would I sin less . . . would I be more devout if I really had to put in effort for forgiveness? Has Jesus sacrifice made it too easy for me? We all have Jonah days! I just didn't know what they were called!
ReplyDeleteI also was having a hard time getting any meaning out reading about to properly kill various animals for sacrifice. So I decided to do something that I thoug about on Tuesday. I wanted to calculate the value of the Ark in today's dollars.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Exodus 38. The Ark required 2,193 pounds of gold which is worth $60,772,416 today. The Ark required 7,545 pounds of silver which is worth $4,023,598 today. The Ark required 5,310 pounds of bronze which is worth $127,440 ( a real bargain today even with high copper prices ). The total is $64,923,454. Not bad for a bunch of people wandering around in the desert. The really scary thought is that someone had to carry around all this metal. Over 15,000 pounds of gold,silver and bronze. That's 7.5 tons. The Isrealites did not need to do P90X.
Yeah... I know, I'm a day [or two?]behind. In re to the"diddly stuff" : a friend of mine told me a long time ago "When you're in the jungle, it's not the elephants that will kill you it's the damn gnats"!
ReplyDeleteHow true that is-- hang in there, S-- your efforts are more appreciated than you know!