Snowed In & Thinking Out Loud

Beautiful, but windy and uber cold day here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Definitely not sitting on the front porch, but with time on my hands lots of thoughts cross my mind.

These last few months have created one of the most divided of times in my 76 years. So much so, that my now years ago decision to register as Unaffilated is beginning to feel like a badge of honor.

Still a conservative Christ-follower, but partisan politics and perhaps even American Christianity may have now run its course as a legitimate moniker.

The closest to this day of divide for me was in 1960, as I remember the fear being sawn by right wing Protestants on the night that JFK was elected. Fear of the Catholic Church destroying religious liberty. Fear is a strange bed partner.

Some of that has survived decades, even more recently given new information released from the FBI files. One piece I read mentioned a former republican president, who in his younger days checked into a hotel in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and was cast as suspect in the assassination along with then vice president, LBJ, a democrat!!

Such conspiracy theories abound, and frankly with the political shenanigans we have seen of late, even I give second thought to some theories.

Yes, I will admit to an occasional ripple of fear myself, as each party seems bent on destroying the other, and in that fray any balance of power. History is full of such parallels and the atrocities that can follow.

The national debt is for sure out of hand, so naturally folk will get behind any mention of fraudulent funding, though when dealing with multiple trillions, there are likely billions without immediate tracking, especially with antiquated software (recent article varified by new Trump appointee) or when sent offshore to allies for defense and charitable purposes.

Waste is waste and hopefully what is found can be recovered and then applied toward reducing an unconscionable debt (the thought of a $5k dispersal to each citizen seems almost bribery).

I sincerely doubt the former distribution given the system's failure, with my bet being that recovered losses will just find their way into the pockets of different power players or be used to offset losses from future tax cuts, while the debt ceiling is simply raised once more.

Just being transparent!

Oops, some of my thoughts and sentences are becoming as run on as the current political fear mongering. Apologies, just capturing my thoughts in free fall on a long snowy day.

Back to my morning discipline of reading Scripture, which also is becoming more difficult, though my Facebook friend, Dubb Alexander helped this morning as I listened to his take on the Old Testament. He was answering a question of his daughter, as to why the God of the Old Testament seemed so different than the God of the New, who was personified as the Christ.

He described the Bible as a detailed journey revealing mankind's recovery of the nature of their Garden God in Genesis, before we somehow lost our relationship with this One called Love.

The Gospels then revealing the reality of the Father's true nature in the man Jesus. I guess it took that long of a journey to assure that the death prophesied would not be lost on us.

Calvary was God raising his hand in love, (don't be derailed by the pronoun), while ancient religion demanded sacrifices and appeasement.

Makes sense moreso than the ruthless God captured by the thoughts of Moses, though mysteriously a thread of mercy runs throughout, pointing toward a moment when truth would again be restored to these Exodus emigrants.

This last month I have gotten through the Torah once more, and am now in Joshua, with my first wonder this time through being why the prostitute, Rahab risked her life and her family's for these foreign spies?

My guess is she experienced the Presence that preceeded these men sent by Yeshua, Joshua from which the English word Jesus is derived.

By the way, not only did these men protect Rahab and her family, but the scarlet cord with which she lowered them over the great wall of Jericho would come to represent much more than an escape mechanism for the spies, but also symbolic of the thread that runs all through the Old Testament up until the time that prophets cried out against religion, with the promise given of a Messiah, a babe born in Bethlehem.

Speaking of promises kept, Rahab is listed in Matthew's record of the lineage of that Messiah. The mother of Boaz whom Ruth would mary.

You gotta love this stuff, even in hard times. Hoping against history, holding to the promises!

Peace in storm and the snow.