February 25

Well, here I am three days behind again on the reading....  Thought I'd have the blog page up so I can type a thought as I go along.  I get so frustrated with myself getting behind, seriously, I need to figure out a routine. (Honestly that applies to more areas of my life than I care to admit, but certainly including the Bible readings!)

So from the readings I should have done on the 23rd:  More offering stuff.  Seriously as I am reading this there is no way to explain the complexity of these offerings.  I repeat, I am so thankful that Christ is the ultimate, and final sacrifice.  There is no way I would ever get this stuff right.  Example:  ...using two live birds that are ceremonially clean, a stick of cedar, some scarlet yarn and a hyssop branch...  And the supplies were the easiest part... Check it out in Leviticus 14:1-7, or this  from vs 14  "The priest will then take some of the blood of the guilt offering and apply it to the lobe of the right ear, the thumb of the right hand, and the big toe of the right foot of the person being purified."

From Mark 6:30-56. " Jesus said " Let's go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile."  He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn't even have time to eat."

So today as I am trying to get caught up and lamenting the feeling of passing myself coming and going this spoke to me deeply.  Plan rest.  It's OK to take a breather, it's good to take a breather... Now to find a calendar square to write "breather" on....

February 24th's reading start right out with the instructions again.... regarding bodily discharge.... here we go with the complicated rules again. If he touches a clay pot it must be broken, a wooden utensil must be rinsed with water.  (who does the rinsing? If you touch what he touched you are unclean.  Then you'd have to take a bath, launder your clothes and wait til evening to be clean again.  That's an awful lot of effort....)

In Mark 7:1-23  Jesus says that it's not what goes into your body that defiles you; you are defiled by what comes from your heart.  I believe he just un-did the command God gave to Moses to give to the people - all those directions about split hooves, or winged insects (Unless they have jointed legs by the way) "By saying this, he declared that every kind of food is acceptable in God's eyes." (vs 19)  It makes total sense to me that the heart is more important than the stomach, but what makes me ponder this is that we are to measure everything against scripture to see if it is appropriate or not.  By this, we will know if someone is truly speaking God's word, or is a wolf in sheep's clothing.   I agree with this whole heartedly, and yet I just realized that given this practice Jesus would have been disregardable on these grounds, because what he said was opposite of what the word of God said.  Hmmm. 

OK, two days caught up one to go:

February 25th
Well the OT reading was all about not having sex with your relatives.. oh gross.  At least this is not an area of scripture I struggle with!!