Nov 8, 2009 …
Yesterday I stayed home all day! I basically did two things: finished catching up typing (since June 16th!) my journaling (PenAndPaperMama and MyChurchJourney) and uploaded them to the blog sites. And in the evening I talked to my sister on the phone for almost 2 hours!
I got up this morning at 4:45 and boiled 2 dozen eggs. Then I went to church-in-the-park/ basement! Got home about 10:30ish… Since then I’ve finally downloaded all the pictures from the camera (since Sept 24), went through them, and picked out the good ones (232 out of over 400!) – now I’m uploading them to Dropbox by turns – and then chose the bestest-of-the-best (100 exactly!) and upload them to my fb! Well, while they are uploading, I will have lots of time to talk about the gathering of Your church this morning that I went to. Because it was so neat! And I learned some amazing things! Thank You, Papa! (Readers: you can check it out at http://normajhill.blogspot.com/ )
…. 8:28 pm Well, all the photos are uploaded … and I made supper, visited with hubby until he went to work, and have been doing lots of laundry. I have also been reading in Your Word.
I’ve been reading in Revelation… it seems to me that some people are generally far more interested in “decoding” the “prophetic” parts of the book, than paying attention to the early chapters to “hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches” … and yet those messages are so incredibly relevant today – just as they were then! (Another awesome thing about the book of Revelation is the passages giving praise and glory to God!). Well, the “future events” are interesting and worth considering, of course.. but we don’t in most cases, know exactly which “historical events” the “prophecies” are referring to… though of course lots of people have their ideas, and are sure they are right (which unfortunately has caused a lot of disunity among believers…).
I’ve also been reading in Judges. There are some stories in there which are pretty strange, at least to our modern way of thinking. Like in chapters 19 to 21, there’s a story about some “worthless men” who committed a terrible act of gang rape (not to mention that she was sent out to them in place of her husband, who they really wanted to molest… seems women were not very highly valued…) and when the rest of the nation of Israel called for the tribe of Benjamin to give up those “worthless fellows” from their tribe, so they could be punished (capitally so, I expect), the tribe refused. This led to civil war, and the tribe of Benjamin was nearly wiped out… Well, I understand that sin had to be punished… but to us at least, the whole story seems to barbaric… and so final… of course they had made a choice, and the law was clear… On the other hand, in one way at least they really weren’t that much different than most of humanity through most of history: as the final verse says (repeated often in Judges), “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Hmmm…
And then I was reading in Romans: 3:23 “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” … The “new covenant” sure (potentially – IF it is accepted) changes everything. No wonder people often really feel a “disconnect” between the Old Testament and the New Testament…
Well, now that I’ve finished Judges, I’ll be going on to Ruth. That’s definitely a Bible story that’s been “novelized” quite a few times! I’m still not started on my NaNoWriMo, and ¼ of the month is already gone! Just 22 days left… that’s 2,272 words a day to reach 50,000 … better get at it if I’m actually going to do it. Maybe my own novelization of the Ruth story is a place to start (I’d really like to do a bunch of Biblical-women-stories novelizations!).
