Reading from Monday, April 10

Yes, I fell asleep again last night before even thinking about the blog. My apologies.

Reading for May 10
1 Samuel 8:1-9:27

Alright - at this point, Samuel has advanced in years. He appoints his two sons to be the judges over Israel, but they are corrupt and they don't follow God's teachings. Soon the Israelites begin to cry out for a king.

This is something that never really crossed my mind when reading this. Every other nation surrounding Israel had a king to lead them into battle, while the Israelites had this loose system of judges. The envy must have always been there seeing other nations with big, important kings with jewels and fancy clothes and stuff. Obviously, they were overlooking the fact that God was their king and was bigger and more glorious than any human king could ever hope to be.

Samuel warns the people that if they appoint a king, he will be unjust, he will enslave the people and take nearly everything from them. They ignored reason and continued to demand a king. This sounds somewhat familiar too - large group of Jews, demanding something, ignoring reason...kind of death-of-Jesusy wouldn't you say?

So Samuel goes to God saying that the people want a king. God tells Samuel to look out for a Benjaminite who will be coming to his town the following day - he will be the king of Israel. This man was Saul. Saul shows up exactly where God told Samuel he would and Samuel has him and his servant to the "high place" (temple I suppose) for dinner.

I gave a talk on Saul at ORB a couple years back - I'll see if I can dig up the slides and post them tomorrow.

John 6:22-42
It's official - John is my favorite Gospel. Every sentence is packed with so much history and depth that I could probably spend a whole year blogging just in John alone. OK - so a couple of really neat things here:

²⁷Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.

Again - this communist/socialist ideal that Jesus preaches about not working to gain physical things but the spiritual fulfillment of knowing Jesus and knowing God. The people ask him what kind of work is required to achieve this food. He replies:

"The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

Now, I don't know if this was intentional, but I think it was. The word 'work' is very important to me here. You need to work at believing in Jesus. It's not something that you can just blindly accept - especially today - 2000 years removed from Jesus walking the earth. And if you do blindly accept it without challenging your beliefs or 'working' toward a deeper understanding, I would challenge you to assess your beliefs and do some thinking about where they come from. This is a daily challenge to believe in the one God sent and to follow everything he has instructed us.

Then, since Jesus has made this big bread analogy, the crowd brings it around to the manna which God provided to the Israelites in the desert. Jesus replies:

 ³²[...]"I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

So in the same way that God physically sustained his people in the actual desert with bread from heaven, he spiritually sustains his people - us - while we are in the spiritual desert with his son from heaven.



Psalm 106:32-48
Another history psalm. Nothing too exciting here.

Proverbs 14:34-35

 ³⁴ Righteousness exalts a nation,
       but sin is a disgrace to any people.
 ³⁵ A king delights in a wise servant,
       but a shameful servant incurs his wrath.

Yes yes. Have a day. Nice one.

 

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Sunday, May 9

Happy Mother's Day. Yay. I'm exhausted - a weekend of eating and sitting around has worn me out. Let's do the Bible.

Reading for May 9
1 Samuel 5:1-7:17
So - it appears that the ark really does contain magical, godly powers. Because once the Philistines had it they all started getting tumors and plagues of rats and stuff. So they tried to pass it off to another country, and the same thing happened, until they finally sent it back to Israel. Israel prayed again for success against the Philistines and Samuel said that they needed to destroy every image of other gods and then the LORD would help them. They did, and he did. They defeated Philistine and there was peace in the land. Also Samuel became Israel's judge.

John 6:1-21
Jesus feeds the 5000 and walks on water.

Psalm 106:13-31
This line really puts some things in perspective here:

¹⁹ The people made a calf at Mount Sinai^[a];
      they bowed before an image made of gold.
 ²⁰ They traded their glorious God
      for a statue of a grass-eating bull.

Also, this is really funny:

²² such wonderful things in the land of Ham

I'm from the land of Ham. My name is Taylor. Taylor Hamencheese. Get it?


Proverbs 14:32-33
 ³² The wicked are crushed by disaster,
      but the godly have a refuge when they die.
 ³³ Wisdom is enshrined in an understanding heart;
      wisdom is not^[a] found among fools.

Yup. Goodnight, yo.

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.

Friday, May 7

Hey-o. Just catchin up here. I'm currently also playing fetch with Kreacher in my living room. His toy is behind my guitar which he is afraid of. That should keep him busy for a minute.


Reading for May 7
1 Samuel 1:1-2:21
Wow - Ruth was really short. Well - another book in the...books...I guess...

OK, new story with new characters. There's a dude. His name is Elkanah. He had two wives Hannah and Peninnah, but I'ma call her Penny. Penny had children but Hannah was infertile. Elkanah treated Hannah with a little more favor because  he felt bad she couldn't conceive. Hannah was still really bummed about not being able to have kids, and apparently, some other chick teased her about it. This made Hannah weep and refuse to eat.

Hannah would pray day after day for the ability to have a son. She made a vow to God that if she ever did conceive that she would never cut the kid's hair. Kinda weird, but OK. Well eventually she does have a son and she names him Samuel. Hey - that's the name of this book!

The second half of this section is a song Hannah sings in gladness of finding out she has conceived. It's definitely a song of praise, but look how she describes God here:

 ⁶ "The LORD brings death and makes alive;
       he brings down to the grave ^[i] and raises up.
 ⁷ The LORD sends poverty and wealth;
       he humbles and he exalts.

This contradicts the other theory that God is all good, all the time. I was talking with my friend Andy and he told me about the "Philospher's God". Basically this Philosopher's God is a theoretical God based on what a group of Philosophers decided would be the criteria for God, were he to exist. They said that if God exists, he must be all powerful, all good/loving, and all knowing. And since there was pain and evil in the world, that contradicted their view of what God should be, and then they decided that God could therefore not exist.

But this is not the Christian God. He is not - well really - he's not any of those things. Not exclusively anyway. He's loving, yes, but he can also get super pissed and take out his rage on people. He's somewhat all knowing based on my perception, but apparently he can't predict the actions of people because he experiences disappointment and regret early in Genesis. And I guess he's pretty close to all powerful - but he can't interrupt me from typing this: "Booty". I suppose he could if he wanted to, but maybe you needed to laugh, and "Booty" did it.

Anyway, my point is I think a lot of people put God in this box and say "he can only be these things" and then when something happens that contradicts those things, people's faiths are shaken - like mine was when reading about the Midianites. I was under the impression that God was all good, all the time. So that contradiction almost made me give up on my faith altogether.

It's my opinion that God is an unchanging being. He is a set of values and abilities and strengths, but also weaknesses and vulnerabilities and loopholes. I don't have a clear picture of him yet, but its certainly a lot broader than what I thought.

John 5:1-23
I think it's often under estimated how much of a maniac Jesus must have seemed to the Jews. Reading the Old Testament and seeing this fervent fear of God and strict regulations and rituals, Jesus coming onto the scene and basically shattering all of that must have been extremely hard to swallow for a lot of people. This line made it pretty apparent to me how much of a bitter pill Jesus' teachings were:

 ¹⁶So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. ¹⁷Jesus said to them, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." ¹⁸For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

On the other hand, to the people who were buying it - Jesus' message must have been extremely liberating.

"You mean I don't have to butcher a cow anymore every time I think about boobs? Sweet!"

Psalm 105:37-45
This continues the same psalm from yesterday. Another historical psalm, but this line stuck out to me:

 ⁴⁰ They asked, and he brought them quail
       and satisfied them with the bread of heaven.

Um, no. The Israelites whined for days about not having meat. Then God flooded their gullet with quails and the people who ate them were completely F-ing destroyed. Don't try to turn that into a "good will" story. It was vicious. 

Proverbs 14:28-29
 ²⁸ A large population is a king's glory,
       but without subjects a prince is ruined.
 ²⁹ A patient man has great understanding,
       but a quick-tempered man displays folly.

OK - a little Zelda: Spirit Tracks before bed, and then it's off to the mother-in-law's tomorrow. NANCE!

They have super slow internet there, so I may not post again until Sunday night, just in case my two readers were wondering.

Much love, yo.

Reading from Thursday, May 6

Hey sorry. I totally fell asleep last night before I could even open the old laptop. Ever since I started doing this I was so afraid of taking one night off out of fear of losing motivation - but I think the opposite is what caused my little tantrum earlier this week. If I need a break, I should allow myself to take one, otherwise I'll get burnt out. I've done this long enough that its an ingrained habit so I don't fear giving up if I miss a night here or there.

Great, so let's read the Bible.

Reading for May 6
Ruth 2:1-4:22
OK - so remember we have Naomi the widow and Ruth, her widowed daughter in law. Now we're introduced to Naomi's brother-in-law, Boaz. Got it? Now Ruth decides to go to the fields and pick up left over grain from anyone who finds Ruth to be a cool chick. The field she ended up working in happened to belong to Boaz.

Boaz meets her and finds out who she is and gives her great favor as a worker in his field. Apparently the news had traveled of Ruth staying with Naomi after Naomi's whole family died. Boaz says

"I've been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. ¹² May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."

Ruth and Naomi then workout a plan that I don't quite understand involving a "kinship redeemer" but basically it resulted in Boaz buying all of Alimilech's land from Naomi and taking Ruth as his wife. Ruth and Boaz had a son who had a son, who had another son named David. As in "and Goliath".

John 4:43-54
It's interesting to read John because it seems like it was written after the other three gospels had already been written and published and studied and was already well known. Because lines like this:

⁴⁶Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine.

It's just written in such a nonchalant way like "Oh yeah, when Jesus did that wine thing." As if people should already know about it. Pretty cool.

Psalm 105:16-36
This is another "History of God" type psalm, giving an account of the stories of Joseph and Moses. Nothing really stands out to me here.

Proverbs 14:26-27
 ²⁶ He who fears the LORD has a secure fortress,
       and for his children it will be a refuge.
 ²⁷ The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life,
       turning a man from the snares of death.

That's the best reason so far for fearing the LORD. Well done, Solomon.

Wednesday, May 5

So I haven't brought this up yet out of fear of jinxing it, but I have been getting up early to work out about every other day. I don't think it's doing anything yet because the hairy bagel is still in full effect.

For those not in the know, this is the hairy bagel:

Anyway - today, I went to the city and walked to and fro my destination - about a 30 minute walk, so pretty good workout. On the way back, I was rushing to catch the 7:07 train. I got to Penn Station at 7:06 and literally skidded across the floor in front of the gate to make the train. It was awesome.

Hey look what I just learned how to do!

Reading for May 5
Judges 21:1-25
Oh yeah! Another book finished! Let's see how old Judges closes out.

One of the things I noticed a few days ago was that Judges is the book with the fewest mentions of God's presence so far in the Old Testament. God is absent from his people at this time, because they continually turned away from him and began worshiping stupid Baal.

My friend Andy pointed out the fact that this line is repeated over and over in this book:

In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.

It's written probably five or six times throughout this book and it almost feels like the chorus of a song, reminding us that the actions of the people were not of God. In those days, the King was considered divinely appointed, and thus had a strong connection with God and was able to interpret and communicate his will to the people. Without a king, the people had no connection to God and no way to hear what he wanted for their lives.

Something else I wanted to point out was the explicit overuse of vows to God in this book overall. Jesus later teaches that swearing to God, or making vows to him is not recommended, and you can see the result of those vows is never favorable for those who make them. Maybe that was the lesson here, but it wasn't written out for the reader. 

The book ends with the same line - "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit" - kind of bookending the entire writing with that image. The people were not only kingless, they were Godless, and they did some pretty awful things because of it. Although they did some pretty awful things when God was present, too - so what should I make of that?

Ruth 1:22
OK, so this is kind of a lineage story, but written out in long hand. Ready?

There's a guy named Elimelech. He marries a woman named Naomi. They have two sons,  Mahlon and Kilion. Mahlon and Kilion get married to Orpah and Ruth. Then Elimelech (Father), Mahlon (Son 1) and Kilion (Son 2) die. So we're left with Naomi (Mother), Orpah (Son 1's wife) and Ruth (Son 2's wife). You still with me?

So Naomi urges the her two recently widowed daughter-in-laws to return to the land they were from, Orpah returns but Ruth does not. She stays with Naomi to comfort her because Naomi had lost everything she loved, was too old to remarry and would not have any more children. That's pretty much it so far.

John 4:4-42
This section covers the Samaritan woman at the well. This story has been documented in other gospels and the details are pretty much the same here. Jesus tells her that he can give her living water that will never make her thirsty again, she wants it, thinking its actual mega water that has thirst mutilating electrolytes in it. Obviously Jesus was using the analogy of thirst for spiritual longing. And that his teachings can fulfill that desire within us.

One of the more striking lines in this text is:

²²You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

There's so much in there. He first says basically "you worship based on your cultures religion, and we worship based on ours. Then he starts talking about worshiping God in spirit and truth, saying those are the kind of worshipers God wants. Phoneys need not apply, I reckon. Then there's that line: God is spirit. A reference to the holy trinity? A verbal cue in reference to worshiping him in "spirit and truth"? I don't know. CDLC, I know you got something for me. Hit up the comments, oh wise one. 

Psalm 105:1-15

Nothing special in this one, to me. I invite you to read it.

Proverbs 14:25
 ²⁵ A truthful witness saves lives,
       but a false witness is deceitful.

Well...yeah. That's the definition of a false witness. That's like saying:

"Eggs are delicious with ketchup,
     but milk is a dairy product."

On that narcissistic note, I'm off to bed. Did I use narcissistic correctly there? Sometimes I think of words and just say them and hope they fit into a sentence. Income tax revenue. See?