November 30, 2012 - 2 Samuel 23   

How honored you must have been to have an ancestor named as one of the thirty-seven named with David.  Not everyone can be a descendant of David, but I imagine being from one of those thirty would be great as well. 

Joab’s brother and his armor bearer make the list, but not Joab himself, even though he had a larger role in many of the things that happened than these other men.  This is almost like King Arthur and his knights of the round table.  There are the ones that are higher than the rest, like Lancelot, and then the others, even though the idea of the round table is that there is no rank, there is always a rank.  These were David’s knights, his warriors. 

November 29, 2012 – Catechism 1975-1986

This is a summary section, so no new information.  I thought I would just summarize the whole section on law myself.  Natural law is that which cannot be done away with.  It has nothing to do with nature but with being human.  The Old law came to us because we did not follow the law that was written on our hearts and it prepared the way for Christ.  Christ coming brings the fulfillment of the Old law and establishes the New.  The New law is focused and founded in love, love of God, Neighbor and Self.  It is most easily laid out in the Sermon on the Mount.  And the Holy Spirit has been given to us to guide us in the New law and help us follow it.  Law’s purpose is not to restrict, it is to protect us. 

November 28, 2012 - Psalms 105     

A Psalm of history, from the wondering group to the establishment of the law with Moses, we see the ups and downs and God’s hand throughout.  I was trying to think if having the whole story shortened like this makes it easier or harder to understand God’s thought process.  You have this group, but they aren’t really following you.  So, you need them to rely on you.  You bring a famine, but before you do, You establish a way for them to be protected from the famine.  Then you bring them into a foreign land where they grow in number, only to be enslaved.  The famine did not fortify their faith in you because in enslavement they turn to the foreign gods.  So, You bring them out of slavery and destroy the other gods to show Your power and might and to show them they must rely on You.  But they continue to turn away or long for the former way of life, so You keep them in the wilderness and force them to rely on You until they are ready for the Law.  This is the sense that you get in reading a shortened version.  You see right away that God is trying to prepare them for the law.  It makes it easier to see that the entire Old Testament is preparing them for Christ.  We should follow that and see that what happens after Christ is preparing us for what is to come in the End.

November 27, 2012 – Job 40

8 – Would you condemn God so that you might be Justified?  What an interesting question.  How often do we blame God for what is going on in our lives when we made the choices that led to it.  Imagine a teenage mother blaming God for her becoming pregnant, a smoker blaming God for their lung cancer.  How often do we blame God so that we justify our actions and try to escape blame. 

I thought it was important to put the footnote in here about what is described.  “Behemoth: a primeval monster of chaos; identified by some scholars as the hippopotamus, on which the description of Behemoth is partially based. The point of the Behemoth-Leviathan passages is that only the Lord, not Job, can control the cosmic evil which these forces symbolize.”  Not only does God ask Job to control nature, but then moves on to primeval monsters.  God started with something overwhelming, all the universe and nature.  We cannot control and didn’t create it.  Now God moves to something smaller, a large monster that is smaller than all of nature, but still too large for us to control or tame.  Yet God can and does and allows it to be.  I guess the next chapter would move to something smaller, the flower in the field, can you make it bloom.  Even the smallest things, Job still cannot really affect.  How do you dare question God then.  

November 26, 2012 - 2 Samuel 22   

We could almost label this Psalm 151.  This is very much like the Thanksgiving Psalms thanking God for all that has been done for him.  The only thing I found out of place was the section where David talked about his righteousness and his lack of sin.  I guess we don’t know when he wrote this, but it comes at this point, so I was assuming he wrote it late in life.  The incident with Bathsheba seems to take away his righteousness.  Maybe this was written before then.  Or maybe we are to understand that David asked for forgiveness, was punished for the sin, and it was past.  That is the only part that didn’t seem to match.  I thought the whole thing had an attitude that doesn’t belong to an older David, but more the David that had newly become king and just defeated Saul.  I would expected more about life and struggles besides war from and aging David.  Then again, war was really the only thing present his whole life.  He was either fighting, winning, or in exile since Goliath.  Maybe that is all he really understood at the end. 

November 25, 2012 – Catechism 1965-1974

The New Testament does not destroy the Old.  I am amazed how many seem to disregard the Old Testament in favor of focusing on only the New.  My first Bible that I received through TEC was a New Testament only Bible.  I don’t know if they still do that or not.  Yes, it is good for people to have the New Testament if they have nothing else and it could also be a cost thing, but the Old Testament is vital to our understanding of the New.  It is now dispelled, it is perfected and fulfilled.  There are many things in the New that either make no sense or cannot be fully understood without knowledge of the foundation in the Old. 

The law of the New Testament is Love.  Love God, neighbor, and self.  During many TEC’s I heard people use the acronym JOY to remind us of this.  We need to look to Jesus, then Others, then Yourself, J-O-Y.  It is a simple way to remind us of what law Christ came to reveal and the Holy Spirit was given to help us achieve it.

Servant vs. Friend – I don’t know if enough reflection is done on what Christ said about this.  He basically changes our relationship with God.  Think about that.  Before Christ, humanity and God had a certain type of relationship.  They did everything in service to God.  Although they failed often, even when the succeeded, it never went beyond that.  There was always a barrier that separated them.  There was the promise that this would change, but many lived and died without seeing that promise fulfilled.  Christ came and the relationship, or at least the potential for that relationship, changed.  Christ said, I call you friends because everything I have heard I have revealed.  There are those that don’t choose to follow Christ, and they may feel that they are still servants serving an all powerful master.  But that door to friendship is open because Christ came to give us all that opportunity. 

November 24, 2012 - Psalms 104     

This is an appropriate Psalm considering what we have been looking at in Job.  It is all about the power of God and how it is so far above us.  Here is another list of things the work because God is in control, things that we cannot alter or control.  Yet, even with so many things beyond our understanding, many refuse to think that God is a possibility. 

November 23, 2012 – Job 39

Several animals and their actions are used to make the point of our lack of control.  The ox, ostrich, horse, and eagle. 

The lack of fear is brought up several times.  Our fear makes us human.  We don’t do things animals do because of our fear.  I wonder if this is pointing to fear of God at all.  With knowledge of God, there is a fear of God, and that makes us different than the animals.  When you lose that fear of God, you slip back into the realm where you are animalistic.  Don’t we see that occurring in our world.  We are taking God out and bringing in ideas that we are all just really glorified animals, here to live life to the fullest, do whatever we want until we die. 

November 22, 2012 - 2 Samuel 21   

I thought it was odd that David did so much to protect Saul’s heritage with so many different actions, then he allows this execution of a number of them.  It just seemed to go against what he had been doing.  I just thought his actions deviated from how he had acted before.

It seemed at the end, there were a bunch of little David and Goliath type stories.  I just think Israelites were exaggerating or naturally just short people.  We also see David getting old and tired, not able to go out and battle like he used to.

November 21, 2012 – Catechism 1961-1964

The law in the Old Testament was limited, but it was necessary because of what we ignore in our hearts.  If we were in line with God’s will and thought, the law would be unnecessary.  But we see time and again in the Old Testament that the followers stray.  The laws were meant to stop that from happening as much.  Imagine if there had been no laws where the Israelites would have ended up. 

The same is true today. If we lived out God’s plan for us and followed His heart, the law would not be necessary.  We know how flawed we are and how many mistakes we make.  We know the law is necessary to curb our actions and that without it we would have chaos.  The laws are there to protect us. 

We also need to remember that in the Old Testament, they did not have the gift of the Holy Spirit, they did not have the Good News yet, only promises that it would one day come.  We take our knowledge of Christ and what He did and the Gift of the Holy Spirit for granted.  We don’t understand the affect that has on our lives, even those that don’t accept Christ or religion at all. 

November 20, 2012 - Psalms 103     
Bless the Lord “ALL MY SOUL”.  When I read that, I wondered about the last time I did that.  All my soul, with everything that I am, with all my being, my entire focus, energy, etc.  Have we ever even come close to doing this.  Even in our most contemplative state, are even close to having all our soul, praise Him.  What must that be like.  That is what Heaven is, where they do praise him with all their soul, completely and without reserve.  Imagine that moment you think you might have been the closest to that and multiply it by infinity and think of the joy of Heaven. 
I thought it was interesting that God’s mercy was compared to our time on Earth.  One being a blink of the eye compared to the other.  Sometimes we think that things that happen to us are everything, that they will stop the world from turning.  It is humbling to put it in the perspective of all time. 

November 19, 2012 – Job 38
Now we get the famous questioning of Job by God.  The questions are right there for anyone that questions God, His will, His actions, the reason He allows one thing and not another.  The questions we ask about God today, He still would question us in the same way.  There are a couple of interesting ones that popped out at me.  Asking if he had walked the depth of the ocean.  Back then, did they have any idea what that really meant, how deep the ocean actually went down.  Even though we have sent things down to look at “the hole in bottom of the sea”, we have never walked it.  Could we ever take Orion’s belt.  Another one that was really beyond them then, not knowing about stars and galaxy’s and space or what Orion’s belt really was, yet still completely beyond us today even though we know exactly what Orion’s belt is.  I thought the description of “storehouses” of snow was interesting.  It is as if all the snow that will ever fall for all time is in a big silo in heaven.  God goes and gets some out every once in a while.  Once its gone, no more snow. 
Is there really any of these questions we can answer any better than Job could have 3,000 plus years ago.  For all our knowledge, all our experience, all our breakthroughs, we still cannot even begin to scrap the edge of God’s power and knowledge. 

November 18, 2012 - 2 Samuel 20   
Joab is involved in everything.  He seems to be such an important actor in every situation, yet I don’t remember ever hearing about him.  It seems like sometimes he is the one running the entire nation.  I guess if you believe anything you see in shows, that is the way kingships work.  You have the king and then you have his right hand man, prime minister, advisor, etc. who really is the one in charge.  From what you hear about David, though, you always imagined that he was the one making his own decisions.  The more you read about Joab, the more you might think David was just another king. 
Wikipedia on Joab explains something that I must have missed.  Joab lost his job as commander to Amasa.  But this wasn’t done by David, it was done by Absalom.  So, it wasn’t any type of military strategy or wrath that caused Amasa’s death, it was just Joab’s revenge.  It makes you wonder why he continued to be in charge or why he wasn’t executed.  In the TV series on David, Joab would be a powerful but vicious character.  If any of you are “Game of Thrones” fans, I think a TV series on David would have the same feel as that series. 

November 17, 2012 – Catechism 1954 – 1960
I think there is always some confusion when people bring up the term “natural” law.  I think these paragraphs do a good job of clarification.  When you say “natural law”, some might point to animals and their behaviors as an example of what this is.  That would be a mistake.  That would be what I would call the “laws of nature”.  Natural law has to do with human nature, what humans have built into them internally because they are human.  It is something that is permanent and never leaves, regardless whether it is realized or acknowledged.  Something makes us uniquely different then the animals.  It is one thing that Darwin’s whole theory really doesn’t explain.  If Darwin is right, why would humans send aid to those in Sandy’s path.  Why do we put change in the red buckets.  Why do we punish people for robbing a bank.  If we are all just animals, none of that would happen.  We are not animals on a basic fundamental level and on that same level we have written on our hearts the “natural law”.  

November 16, 2012 – Psalms 94 – 95

There have been several mentions in the different Psalms regarding the idea that those that do evil feel that God cannot see them.  It is an interesting study to ask those that do evil what they think about their actions.  Working in the public defender’s office, I know first hand the lack of accountability that people have for the things they do wrong.  Most will blame others or feel that what they did was acceptable, even if illegal.  We have grown a culture of relativism that has led to illegality of an action not having any detrimental effect in stopping people from doing bad things.  And this is what people are caught doing.  How much more the all seeing eyes of God?  People cannot stomach the thought of God knowing what they do, so they choose to believe that He cannot see.  But, does “the one who formed the eye not see?” 

“Oh that today you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts”.  What a great line to reflect on.  I have talked before about listening to God, listening for Him.  The first obstacle is to actually listen, to not be so busy as to fill your ears with other noise.  But once you leap that hurdle and you hear what He says, your heart must be open.  How often do we hear Him and feel it is too much to ask, turn away, and harden our hearts.

November 15, 2012 – Job 37

More discourse on the greatness of God.  I like the last line.  “Fear Him, none can see Him, however wise their hearts”.  Wisdom is always associated with the brain.  Have you ever thought of your heart being wise.  I don’t think I have.  It is a different twist on thinking about our heart.  We usually see that as the impulsive thing that has to be tamed by our brain. 

November 14, 2012 – 2 Samuel 19

We see that Joab knocked some sense into David before his sorrow cost him everything.  It hard to fault David, he did lose his son, but there has to be a time and place for grieving.  Just after a battle that you have one, grieving over the death of the enemy will not fill your followers with much confidence.  It says that they walked into the city like those that were defeated.  So David snaps out of it and is able to regroup.  And with Absolam’s death, all of Israel realizes that they don’t have a leader, they remember all that David did for them, and quickly return him to his throne.  We see why all of Israel came with Absolam.  It was so they could bring back David in a united way. 

We see David go through individual apologies and forgiveness with several characters who played a part in his fleeing of Israel.  We see David being very merciful and trying to restore people back to where they were and granting request.  David coming back in power is kind of like when the Godfather is having a daughter get married. 

Although the individual issues appear to get resolved, the chapter ends with Israel and Judah opening up this conflict between them.  This must be where this starts, I cannot remember another place where it is mentioned.  This fight between the two will continue until they are all in exile and allowed to return.  When we read about the spilt and the battles between the two, we can always look back and remember that it started with David the king had to flee and who went with him.

November 13, 2012 – Catechism 1949 – 1953

We have freedom.  We have reason.  But we are only to use them in obedience to God who gave them to us.  It is when we take our freedom and reason and go outside the bounds of God, we cease to abide in morality, we do not conform to any natural law, that is when it no longer because real freedom or real reason.  When we step out of God’s bounds and indulge in immorality, the things that look free are enslaving and what looks reasonable is counterfeit.  We are lied to by our humanity which is stained by original sin.  Our eyes and our hearts will lead us astray if we trust in them alone.  We need God to be our guide and we need our God given Earthly guide, the Catholic Church.

November 12, 2012 – Psalms 92 – 93

When I saw that it was called a Sabbath song, I was expecting more about keeping the day holy.  “For you make me jubilant, Lord, by your deeds; at the works of your hands I shout for joy.” That is appropriate praise for the Sabbath. This actually follows the Job reading very well.  It talks about the great works and profound designs of the Lord.  Job was just talking about God’s works being beyond our comprehension.  That is a good reflection for any Sunday, the great works and unlimited greatness of God.  Sundays are God’s day and we should think about how much He is beyond us.  Humility should be a key characteristic of Sundays and will allow our worship to be much more authentic and appropriate. 

November 11, 2012 – Job 36

God saves the afflicted through their affliction.  This whole idea of suffering being a good thing is so far beyond the normal worldly notion that it is almost seen as barbaric.  I have written about this before, but for almost anyone, whether they want to admit it or not, has experienced the knowledge and growth you receive by going through a tough situation.  The secular world will tell us that any suffering is bad, but they also coin phrases like “no pain, no gain” and “if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger”.  The secular world understands that we would not be a free country without a Revolutionary War. 

Yet the educate us that suffering is harmful and should be avoided at all cost.  I have an urge to have sex before I am married.  The world says that you shouldn’t suffer that but indulge it.  Homosexual tendencies, use of marijuana, envy of your neighbor, you shouldn’t have to put up with those pangs, indulge them, you deserve to fulfill your every pleasure.  Suffering through these temptations is not growth, it is damaging.  I would say that indulging is the damaging part.

November 10, 2012 – 2 Samuel 18

When I read the part about the forest consuming more than the sword, I immediately thought of the Ents in Lord of the Rings; very peaceful until they get riled up and then very deadly.  It makes you wonder about whether Tolkien got some inspiration from that very line in the Bible.  It makes you wonder how many other stories have come because of something that was remembered or inspired by the Bible.  It makes you wonder if that is all part of God’s plan.  Some may never pick up the Bible, but if they read or watch Lord of the Rings and see the Ents, they get a sense that when evil rises to a certain level, even the forest will fight for good.  That is a message straight from God’s Word and has reached a multitude that may never know they are learning about God’s love.   

At first I was thinking, what terrible aim.  He threw three pikes and the guy was still alive.  He was just hanging there and the guy couldn’t hit him well enough to kill him. 

Then I thought of how short their memories are.  Do they not understand what happens to those that disobey the king, even if it is hurting the enemy?  David is all about mercy and forgiveness, especially in dealing with his enemies, and this is his own son.  He has already executed those that have killed enemies against his orders, won’t it be worse when it is his own son.  Joab seems to understand this.  He ask the messenger why he wants to go so badly.  And then when the messenger gets there, he is so blunt about it.  He really has no idea that this is something awful and probably doesn’t understand why he is about to meet his end. 

November 9, 2012 – Catechism 1939 – 1948

We need solidarity for the success of the group.  There is a complete lack of solidarity as a country after the election.  Everyone is calling for it, calling for unity, calling for us to move forward, but it is not something that can be forced.  There is even a lack of solidarity among groups, Catholics were split down the middle in voting for Obama.  There appears solidarity among differing minority groups in that they were a large reason Obama won, but what does that point to.  Different groups have different agendas.  Women’s groups do not have the same goals as Gay rights groups and neither have the same goals as immigration groups.  But they were all in solidarity about electing Obama.  What does that even mean for the future?

And solidarity does not mean we have to agree on everything.  Differences are healthy and God created us all with differences because He knew we needed to use all our different talents to be successful, but this lack of solidarity is different.  This isn’t just differences on details or several minor issues.  The lack of solidarity stretches the width and breadth of almost every issue.  In the debates, there seemed to be nothing that could be agreed upon.  The vision of the future and what the country should look like and how we get there is fundamentally different across the two aisles, so THIS lack of solidarity is something that is not healthy.  Trying to find the middle ground, which exist somewhere in all of this, is the answer, but for all the talk, no one wants to move there.  The ugliness of the campaign, the venom that was slung from both sides has poisoned the water for us all and we are stuck in a untenable situation.  Solidarity is the key, but right now we do not have that as a country.

November 8, 2012 – Psalm 88

I was thinking about those that died before Christ.  It describes them as being “cut off” from God.  What rejoicing there must have been when Christ came down to them after His death. 

I was wondering what was meant by “your terrors” or God’s terrors that the writer is describing.  I first thought that they were images of what happens when you do not follow God.  The terrors scared him into following God and because he lived a Godly life, his friends and neighbors shunned him.  But I wasn’t sure.

Then I thought it might be a Job sort of thing.  The terrors are the taking away of things that he had and because of the loss of those, his friends and neighbors shunned him.  I really couldn’t decide if it was either or neither or both. 

November 7, 2012 – Job 35
 
We add and take away nothing from God. When we do evil it is to people like us, it has no effect on God. Job thinks he affects God and makes himself on a higher level than he is. This is what appears to upset the speaker. Even if you are righteous or perfect, you still have no effect on God. Almost feel like I need to reread Job and see if I get the sense that Job is putting himself on that level. I don’t remember thinking or feeling that when I commented on Jobs responses, but I do remember him talking down to the other commenter’s, taking their responses as words that were worldly while he had some knowledge that was beyond them. I remember thinking that this was the point of Job. That it was teaching us to think beyond the worldly limits. All the time I was praising Job for his thinking, was he being arrogant and thinking himself godly.

November 6, 2012 – 2 Samuel 17

David escapes because of the inside spies, but couldn’t his spies have sent him information about either plan.  I don’t see why the plan had to change in order for his escape.  With the change in plans, the first councilor went off and killed himself.  Maybe the was the whole point and the escape of David was only secondary. 

I don’t see why Israel had to go all together.  Seems inefficient.  I guess if God wanted the whole of Israel to see David’s victory or demise so that they would be united, that makes sense. 

What I find so interesting is the sheepish following that Israel shows.  They are so easily led astray.  You would think that Americans would not describe ourselves as sheep but leaders, but how easily do we fall.  Where are we being led.  How easily do we changed our course and follow the latest trend.  Whether it is cloths, technology, food, diets, etc we are always buying into the latest thing.  This is a sheepish way of acting.  Some would say our economics is following the socialist ideas of Europe and their ideologies.  So, maybe we aren’t the leaders we think we are.  Maybe we are just the lost sheep of Israel looking for anything to follow.  I think I just wrote about this trend starting and will continue until our country as a whole makes its shepherd God.  Until then we are lost sheep and who know where we will be led.

November 5, 2012 – Catechism 1934 – 1938

There is a vast difference between treating everyone with dignity and giving everyone exactly the same things.  With one each and every individual is seen as an individual made by God and to be treated as such.  In the other, every person is seen as someone with material needs that are exactly the same as everyone else and should have exactly the same as everyone else.  One is the teaching of God, the other is the institution of man.  One will lead to successful community and the other will lead to chaos and destruction.  If you read the paragraphs, you will see that the Church teaches equality in dignity among all people regardless of race, gender, etc.  But this does not mean equal in every facet of life.  The next paragraph talks about the talents and gifts we are all given by God.  These differences distinguish us from everyone else.  We are not meant to be the same, God made us different for a reason, and we unit as a community when we embrace our differences and each use our talents to move the entire community forward.  Some have more, some have less, but together we all are to move in a direction together.  If you have more, you are expected to give more.  If you have less, you are expected to do what you can.  But this is morality, it is not the role of government.  When it becomes the role of government, especially a government that tries to do it based on morality but is not founded in morality, it will not succeed.  It will only breed animosity, divide, greed, entitlement, laziness, anger, and destruction.  Too long our nation has seen equality defined as everyone being the same.  That is not the real definition of equality.  You cannot get to the real definition of equality without God the creator and there will be no movement back towards a real definition until we take a step back towards God as a nation.  Until then, our path leads to a very dark place where we are equal in the eyes of the world at the loss of equality as it has been bestowed on us by God. 

November 4, 2012 – Psalms 86 – 87

All along, the psalms where David pleads to the Lord for help, you always picture him running from Saul.  We have just recently read that he also left Jerusalem in tears running from his own son.  When I read this Psalm, that is when I pictured him writing it.   If he didn’t write it during this exile, he surely would remember his own psalm and pray it while he was walking up the Mount of Olives in tears. 

November 3, 2012 – Job 34

I didn’t get as much from this chapter.  It seems to go on in the same tone against Job, but not really in specifics.  What I gathered is that those that came to Job felt he never really conversed with them, that he always knew he was better than them, and that Job was communicating with God directly.  The speaker thinks that Job is just arrogant, not a righteous man, as claimed, but one that is just blinded by his own ego to his faults. 

November 2, 2012 – 2 Samuel 16

David, now humbled by being thrown out by his son, is still haunted by Saul’s house.  But he continues his restraint of laying any hand on anything that was related to Saul.  This man follows David and continually curses and throws rocks at him and David accepts it  as if it were from God.  I love his explanation.  His own son kicked him off the thrown, how much more do the descendants of Saul have a legitimate reason to hate him. 

I find it odd that God is more or less absent from this whole scene.  David gives up the throne, a new king is made in Jerusalem, God’s anointed king is in exile, and we don’t get any sense of guidance from God.  Maybe David was being guided, but we don’t hear about it.  I guess we will see what God advises David to do from here, but he gave up the city rather easily.  When God is on your side, no army of any size matters against you, so why not put up a fight.  Does David have some sense that God isn’t on his side anymore.  Does he think he has become Saul and has lost God’s anointing. 

November 1, 2012 – Catechism 1928 – 1933

Respect for life and the dignity of a human person is essential.  “By flouting them, or refusing to recognize them in its positive legislation, a society undermines its own moral legitimacy. If it does not respect them, authority can rely only on force or violence to obtain obedience from its subjects.”  How can a government that allows, even encourages, the killing the unborn or the euthanizing of the dying claim any kind of moral high ground when it goes out into the world and tries to stop tyranny.  The fact that the UN is pro-abortion takes away much of its credibility in any human rights legislation.  The fact that it, for the most parts, sides with China and its one child policies on population control shows where it lands in a moral sense.  If I were the leader of a nation that did not follow a Godly understanding of human rights, why would I listen to the US or the UN when it tells me to stop something they think is wrong.  When you fail to have a foundation in morality, you lose your footing as an evangelical for freedom, which is what the great American experiment is all about.   

This same message of morality extends to those that claim to be righteous because they seek to help the poor and the needy.  Those are righteous acts, but when you preach aid to the poor with one side of your mouth and destruction of the unborn with the other, your morality is unconvincing, your argument has not foundation, and you are the definition of hypocrisy.  The poor and the needy do need our help, but they are no less vulnerable than the unborn baby.  It is shocking that so many that promote gracious giving to the poor are so blind to the weak morality they produce by being pro-abortion at the same time.