Reading from Saturday, May 8

Whoa - morning post. What is up? Well, Kreacher is done with sleeping so I'm up with him trying to keep him out of trouble at my mother-in-law's house which is like mega clean.  Last night we were at the Borgata playin the penny slots with them.

Let's hit the books.

Reading for May 8
1 Samuel 2:22-4:22
Wow, some great story telling here in Samuel. Here's a basic summary.

Eli of the tribe of Levi was the chief priest in Israel at this time. Remember that the tribe of Levi was selected as the tribe from which all the priests of Israel would come, and was shown great favor by God. Now Eli's sons were sinning pretty heavily - it says that they were seducing the women of the temple, but it doesn't give much detail beyond that. Eli does not punish his sons and just asks them why the continue to sin.

 So one day a 'man of God' comes to Eli. Now this 'man of God' is speaking in first person for God saying things like, "“I revealed myself to your ancestors when the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt." so it's pretty safe to assume that this is either God himself, or God inhabiting someone else's body. But this guy tells Eli that because he has shown more favor to his family than to God, that God is going to take away his favor from the tribe of Levi. All the Levites will die before their time and priests will no longer be rasied out of them.

Meanwhile, Samuel - who is a young man assisting Eli in the temple - is being raised to become a good man. One night he is sleeping in the Temple and he hears a voice calling "Samuel!" He thinks that it's Eli calling him, so he runs to Eli's room and says, "Yeah? What's up?" Eli says, "Dude, I was sleeping - I didn't call you. Get back to bed." This happens three times and then Eli realizes that it's God calling Samuel. He instructs him to wait and listen next time he hears the voice. So he does and basically God tells Samuel the same thing he told Eli - that the Levites are caput.

The next morning, Samuel tells Eli what God told him and Eli accepts it as the Lord's will. One of God's promises to Eli was that two of Eli's sons would die on the same day. Now there was a war going on with Philistine and the Israelites were losing hard. Both of Eli's sons were indeed killed in this war - but there are some larger themes here.

After the first day of heavy casualties, the Israelites go and grab the Ark of the Covenant. They believe that with it, they now have the power of God and they cannot lose. The Philistines are also under this assumption and rally their troops saying they need to fight even harder. They slaughter the Israelites the next day and on top of that, they capture the Ark of the Covenant. Bam. Insult to injury.

This is a classic storytelling method - its the old 'the power was inside you all along - you didn't need the cape to fly.' The Israelites had put their faith in an object rather than God himself. Now I'll concede that objects had a lot more symbolic value back then, but I think the point here is that they were hoping in this ark rather than God. But now that the ark is captured, the people feel like they're double doomed.

John 5:24-47
Gosh - I don't even know where to begin here. There is so much analysis that can be done of these word of Jesus that I may need to come back to this later in a separate post. Just a few compelling things here:
Jesus says that the dead will be called to judgement and either raise to heaven or descend into hell. This signifies that everyone who died from the beginning of time until this point, just simply died. So, until Jesus message and sacrifice - they weren't judged.

Then he tries to validate himself by saying that if it was only him testifying about himself, it would be pretty much be invalid. It's like how I have a problem with people claiming the Bible is truth because there's a line in the Bible that says its the truth. You need an outside party or experience to verify the validity of something. So Jesus says there are two things that validate him and his message - first is John the Baptist's testimony about him and second are the miracles he performs in front of many people. He also says that he shouldn't have to do these things or to prove himself to the people, but its the only way they will believe.

I would like to come back and work through this section piece by piece later on in a separate post.
Psalm 106:1-12

This is another historical psalm, but there's some context around it. The psalmist is talking about the miracles of God and how even though the Isarelites refused to believe, God continually redeemed them and performed miracles to save them.
Proverbs 14:30-31
I love both of these:

30 A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body;
jealousy is like cancer in the bones.

31 Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker,
but helping the poor honors him.

Make of those what you will, dear friends. Happy Mother's day. I'll post later tonight.