Num 26-30 - In which I compare Van Halen to God

The readings - Days 53-54 - Numbers 26-30

Funny how when I fall behind in posting about Numbers, it tends to correspond with the times when Numbers decides to completely abandon narrative and story and revert back to that which earned it its name...

I swear it's not on purpose - it just happens that way.

Anyway, on days 53 and 54, Numbers did just that, and we're back with *drum roll* another census!

Sure, traditionally it was Moses, but I say the author(s) of most of Numbers were these guys...

Ex. 33-35 - making up

The readings - Day 29 - Exodus 33-35

I had a fair number of expectations going in to this project, but needing to set aside the reading for a while until I stopped laughing was, if I'm honest, not on my list.

Then I started Exodus, chapter 33. Specifically, I arrived at verse 3.

1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, "Depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, 'To your descendants I will give it.' 2 "I will send an angel before you and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite. 3 "Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, because you are an obstinate people, and I might destroy you on the way."

 That is how annoying the Israelites are. God doesn't trust Himself not to just destroy them all out of sheer frustration before He's carried out His own plan for them.

Amazing.

Turns out, the Israelites didn't find it all that funny, which I suppose is to their credit - they knew, sort of, what they'd done by this point, and seem to have had the glimmer of understanding regarding just how they'd manage to survive in the desert without a constant supply of food materializing in front of them every morning.

Luckily, here's another example of the sort of unique relationship featured in the Old Testament. Moses is in such a close relationship with God that the two regularly speak "as friends" according to the text.

From this relationship we get Moses directly interceding and changing God's mind, convincing Him to continue to be a physical presence with the Israelites,

I recently was involved in a discussion on Facebook about God, the existence of God, the ridiculousness of some attempts at disproving that existence and other things, when someone piped up with a series of random, unrelated and blatantly wrong points he felt it necessary to make, starting with the notion that the relational aspect of the Christian faith was a later innovation and wasn't actually part of the Bible.

As this passage, and the vast majority of the rest of scripture as well, proves, this is mercifully not the case.

Day 5 - Genesis 16-18

Names are interesting things in the Bible.

These days, apart from souvenir key chains and schmaltzy plaques/posters, people (North Americans, at any rate) don't really ascribe too much significance to names, but names – of people or places – tend to be incredibly important in the Bible, so much so that God Himself, now and then, lays down the law and throws a name out there, as a promise or a signifier of some larger plan.

Ishmael, for example. "God will hear." What a promise to a pregnant woman who has run away into the desert after being used in perhaps the most profound way, only to be reviled and, in all likelihood, severely beaten for her trouble.