Tuesday, March 23 - UPDATED

Hey. I came back in and re-did this one while I was actually awake! 
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Good evening. Very tired. Bible go.

Reading for March 23

Numbers 36:1-Deuteronomy 1:46

Hey, check it out. I finished Numbers - the hardest book I've ever read.

So the last chapter of Numbers is a strange one. There is a debate about inter-tribe marrying. The leaders of the tribe are complaining that if a woman from another tribe marries a man in their tribe, it will skew the population count and when it comes time to divide up the land it will make the distribution uneven. So God gives the decree that all marriages must occur between two people of the same tribe. Soooo they married their cousins. Excellent. And that's how Numbers ends. A book about even more obsure rules and possibly the most agregious offence God even created and has been written down.

The first chapter of Deuteronomy is a recap of what happened in Numbers and how many times the Israelites turned away from God and did not trust him.

Luke 5:29-6:11

³²I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

This is a commonly quoted line from Jesus. Basically, "We don't have doctors to take care of healthy people, we need doctors to take care of sick people." Jesus came to help the outcasts and sinners.

The rest of this section revisits the argument between Jesus and the Pharisees about healing on the Sabbath. Jesus says, ""I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?"

What I take this to mean is "why follow some old rule that prevents you from doing good."

You know, this is a question I've been thinking about a lot lately: morality. I had lunch with a good friend today and he was talking about one of his friends who wasn't a Christian. This friend of his was one of the most moral people he's ever known - constantly looking for ways to help others and was always a selfless person, and yet she had no reason to act that way. She had no God to answer to or be accountable to.

At the same time - she wasn't being good in the hopes of achieving salvation from a divine being. She was just being good to others because that's what felt right. And I think that might be what Jesus is getting at here. From the way my friend described it, his friend put most Christians we know to shame in terms of the selflessness his friend possessed.

I think as Christians, we often get so caught up in ourselves and focusing on the one-on-one relationship with God, that we start to live in a self-important bubble. So much of Christian preaching is about being good enough to not go to Hell, and that creates a petty narrow, selfish world view...wouldn't you think?


Psalm 66:1-20

Oh man, I'm so tired. This psalm is a very nice psalm.

You know, I tried to come back and read this one and write something meaningful, but this one just isn't speaking to me. I think what I said last night is pretty sufficient. 

Proverbs 11:24-26


 ²⁴ One man gives freely, yet gains even more;
       another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty.
 ²⁵ A generous man will prosper;
       he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.
 ²⁶ People curse the man who hoards grain,
       but blessing crowns him who is willing to sell.

This is an interesting spin on the eye for an eye way of thinking, and its more like a good deed for a good deed.

OK - now this entry is good enough for prime time. Excellent times.