Just honestly, my opinion, any time I've read through this portion of the Old Testament, is this:
THEM ISRAELITES CRAY.
Always, I am perplexed anew as to why God wanted to make people in the first place. I know, i know... Genesis says God was lonely and made people to have some company. I get that. But why, after all these centuries since Adam, is God still putting up with all these people's subsequent nonsense?
My nephew is fascinated with the game Minecraft.
The game basically involves building, sustaining and improving your own little pretend world, on a computer. But it's not REAL; it has no bearing on our real lives as humans in our day-to-day experiences. It's just a game. A Minecraft player could walk away from the game entirely and not have his or her actual, day-to-day life affected at all.
We are the big, real people. Minecraft is a tiny world in a game.
Sometimes I feel like we could be thought of as a version of Minecraft in God's vast, never-ending, omnipotent existence. I mean, we should not even reduce God to merely "existing;" God just IS. God always was, is now and always will be. Period.
From Judges chapter 9:
"After Abimelech had ruled over Israel for three years, God sent a spirit that stirred up trouble between Abimelech and the leading citizens of Shechem, and they revolted.
God was punishing Abimelech for murdering Gideon’s seventy sons, and the citizens of Shechem for supporting him in this treachery of murdering his brothers.
The citizens of Shechem set an ambush for Abimelech on the hilltops and robbed everyone who passed that way. But someone warned Abimelech about their plot.
Etcetera, etcetera... why do all these petty, miniscule things even concern the Great God of all the Universe?? And what kind of self-importance led someone to write that the Great God of all the Universe was exerting effort and focus to create a scheme to punish this one little human............
You get what I'm saying.
So why put up with our nonsense?
That is a question to which I don't feel like I will ever an answer that satisfies my mind.
Anyway, those are just a few thoughts I felt like sharing. Does any of it actually matter? My thoughts, I mean. Probably not, on a larger scale of thought.
I am happy to have this blog as my own forum to vent my thoughts as I feel them. This is Nicole space. Welcome to my world... LOL!
Anyway, if you're still reading this, I am travelling for my job, for the first part of this next week. Yes it's for work and yes there is a mission behind this trip; to distribute information that can enormously help hundreds of Louisiana farmers whose crops were affected or even destroyed by all the flooding our state received in 2016... but my favorite part, in deadpan honesty, is that I get to go our of town for almost 3 days.
I get to eat meals for which I will be reimbursed, and I get to stay TWO NIGHTS in my own private room in a Hampton Inn in north Louisiana. I am accustomed to Motel 6's and LaQuinta Inns. This will be so very nice...........
The only drawback is that Lena will not be able to join me... because, let's be honest... in my world, everything is better when Lena is involved.
I will miss her. I would love to share my paid-in-full, actually pretty nice hotel room with her. At the same time, though, I believe I will be able to soldier on and enjoy the modified splendor given to me as a gift from the State of Louisiana
Actually it's a gift from the Federal Government, when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it all. We have obtained a federal grant which will pay grant awards to qualifying farmers and cover administrative expenses including our salaries and the costs of these outreach trips to disseminate information to farmers about this program.
So, truly, America, I offer my deepest thanks for your hard-earned tax monies and will try to have the highest patriotic thoughts while I relax between cool, clean, white sheets, watch free HBO and drink complimentary coffee in my nice hotel room. I plan to relax to the utmost. I have expectations of awesomeness and almost zero worry that I will be disappointed. HA!!
Really, actually, I would rather think of this trip as being funded by my personal income tax contributions, the thousands and thousands of dollars I have paid thus far in my working lifetime. Since I am paying for other people's Medicare, other people's Welfare and the evil workings of a President whom I feel safe assuming does not have the mental wherewithal to count all ten of his own toes... I will take this mere few hundred dollars refunded to me, one might say, as a thank-you.
Hahahahahahahahaha...............
On a more serious note, Lord, please help me to remember that I, too, can be seen as just another tiny, little person doing tiny, little things. Even though I have never been able to understand WHY, I do thank You deeply for caring about me. You are too big for my tiny mind to understand. I'm just going to take it on faith that Your word is true and that, no matter why, You do love me. You keep every single one of Your promises. Please help me keep my mind fixed on You. I love You.
Happy Saturday, everybody!
