Medicine Hat Joe

Week 8  Psalm 50

Near the end of the psalm the Lord says: you thought that I was just like you. I was thinking today that if I had the ability to make it happen I’d be tempted to make God just like me.
I guess it’s possible I’d make him like someone else. Or maybe a mash-up of several Top Quality People. But I suspect that if it was my choice he’d have a lot of Joe-like qualities.
Because if he was just like me we’d always be on the same page
He’d do things that were consistent with my preferences
Most of the time we’d just naturally agree and when we didn’t we’d be able to reach a consensus pretty readily
I’d probably feel a higher degree of personal liberty if he was like me
He’d be friendly conciliatory affable respectful obliging cooperative altruistic attentive responsive
He’d be a fairly Albertan-style god
There’d have to be some modifications to Bible God – for example his justice couldn’t be so absolute & decisive (in Canada an impartial judiciary is kind of negotiable)
Less demanding & strident. Less certain. Less awesome. Less rigorous. His absolutes would need some paring down. He’d not do objectionable stuff. He’d need to see eye-to-eye with me. There’d have to be an uptick in his flexibility. He’d have to be more like one-of-the-boys.
I’m tempted to think that life would be more manageable if God was just like me.

Note: quote from Psalm 5o:21 (NASB)

Week 8  Deuteronomy 1

Right up front Moses retells the story about the 12 spies. It’s a little different from the Numbers 13 version of the same story.
Deuteronomy says the people approached Moses with the idea of infiltration.
Numbers says it was the Lord’s idea.
I wonder if I’ve sniffed out a contradiction. A genuine contradiction might be where one account says “12 spies were sent out” and the other says “no spies were sent out”. So I wonder how this one stacks up.
I look at all my materials from both stories:
a) the Lord spoke to Moses and told him to send out 12 spies (Numbers)
b) Moses did send out 12 spies (Numbers)
c) the people floated the idea to Moses about sending 12 spies (Deuteronomy)
d) Moses thought that was a good idea (Deuteronomy)
e) Moses did send out 12 spies (Deuteronomy).
I rearrange the pieces…
c) the people floated the idea to Moses
d) Moses thought it was a good plan
a) Moses got confirmation from the Lord – who ok’d the covert operation
b) & e) Moses sent the spies.
Shuffling the pieces like this makes pretty good sense to me (if I’d written Deuteronomy the only thing I’d have added to the reordered list – between d) & a) – was that when the people made the suggestion to Moses he ran it by the Lord).
I’m not saying that “this absolutely solves the question”. But the concern is less of a concern for me now.

Note: the two stories are Deuteronomy 1:19-23 & Numbers 13:1-17

Week 8  Numbers 23

Lots of times things just inexplicably register in my mind and today something registered inexplicably with me: God is not a man that he should lie. That’s only half the verse but that was the key phrase: God is not a man that he should lie.
Bible-readers read for different reasons but it’s probably a pretty common goal to read the bible to find things out. So the idea that God isn’t like a man since he tells the truth is a pretty useful thing to know.
It’s a contrastive comment. Contrast #1 is that God isn’t a human being. God and human beings aren’t the same.
I can flip-flop it: human beings aren’t the same as God.
I can personalize it: I’m not like God.
It’s a pretty clear-cut distinction: God and I aren’t the same.
Contrast #1 is developed a bit in Contrast #2: God is not a human being that he should lie.
So one specified point of difference between God and me is that he doesn’t lie.
I can flip-flop it: one specified distinction between God and me is that I do lie.
I can personalize it: I’m not like God because I don’t tell the truth.
There’s a number of ways that God is different from me (creative capacity…knowing everything…endless existence…like that) and those are things I can’t really relate to.
But God being different because I don’t have the capacity he does to tell the truth? That I can understand.

Note: quote from Numbers 23:19 (NLT).

Week 8  Numbers 26

In Numbers 1 there’s a military census of the tribes.
Then in Numbers 26 there’s a second census.
If I’m not paying attention I might think chapter 26 is just a rehash of chapter 1 (or by that time I might have totally forgotten about 1). But 1 & 26 are two different censuses separated by forty years of time spent in the wilderness.
When I was reading 1 about a week ago I was interested in the order the names were listed so I wrote them down on a sheet of lined yellow paper. [Q: what did I discover? Short A: not much! (see ‘lists & lists’ and the Directed Listing Technique).]
Anyway I’d also written down the census numbers beside each name in chapter 1 (e.g. Reuben 46,500) so when I saw more numbers in 26 I figured I’d compare them.
All 603,000 men in List #1 had died. 602,000 had replaced them in List #2.
7 tribes had increased in number.
The Simeon tribe had decreased catastrophically – 37,000 fewer men.
Manasseh had grown by 21,000 – the largest increase.
The biggest tribe in List #1 was Judah…and Judah retained his Number 1 ranking in List #2.
The smallest tribe in List #1 was Manasseh; Simeon the smallest in List #2.
Hmmm…there’s no mental Red Sea opening up for me while I look at these numbers so I’m a bit disappointed. But my expectations weren’t really sky-high to start with. There’s more lists to come. Something might develop.

Note: List #1 is in Numbers 1:20-46 & List #2 in 26:4-51. The census numbers listed here are rounded-up (and don’t quote the stats without double-checking).

Week 7  Numbers 22-24

The story of Balaam and his donkey is one of my favorites. It’s really Balaam’s story. But even though the donkey is a bit player he’s not just decoration either.
I don’t know for sure what-all Balaam’s special talents were. He was a kind of shaman…maybe a diviner, maybe he could influence events, maybe he could cure illness.
But one thing he definitely had was a reputation for being able to bless or curse people. That’s what Balak needed him for. Cursing.
Balaam had direct communication with the Lord on five different occasions in the story. And in the story’s roughly 96-verses Balaam spoke 28-verses of prophetic blessing that came directly from the Lord. On the surface it looks like Balak is the villain and Balaam the hero – a real man-of-God type guy.
But then I remember the donkey. He had three direct revelations of his own from the Lord. And he miraculously stared talking ‘human’. But that didn’t make him a real donkey-of-God type donkey.
Balaam and his donkey play similar roles – instrumental roles. They both had unusual religious experiences. And they both got some special (temporary) language capacities.
But that’s about as far as it went for both of them. After his conversation with Balaam the donkey reverted to his inarticulated braying. And after his conversations with the Lord and his prophetic blessings Balaam reverted to his normal behaviour – doing what his paymaster wanted in the first place.

Week 7  Numbers 16

The story of Korah Dathan & Abiram and their 250 associates is pretty sobering because the Lord is responsible for the execution of that entire group.
It makes me think about being a bible-reader and I ask myself one key question: do I get to make a judgment call about the Lord’s action? Put another way…do I get to decide whether the Lord acted correctly or incorrectly?
This is an intriguing (and potentially powerful) position to find myself in…deciding whether or not the Lord did wrong.
I figure each bible-reader gets to make that call and it’s a pretty basic one-of-two-options call to make: a) I do get to make my own personal judgment call about what the bible says the Lord does; b) I don’t get to make a judgment call about what the bible says the Lord does.
Personally I can definitely see the appeal of the first option – it puts me in the Driver’s Seat…I Decide for Myself! I tend to think this would make my decision-making in bible-reading a lot simpler.
But for now I’m sticking with the second option – I’ll read the bible and let it tell me what it’s telling me and not me tell it what it’s telling me. Unfortunately there’s a higher degree of difficulty with b) so that means my bible-reading won’t get any simpler.

Week 7  Numbers 11 Psalm 45

Out in the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula Israel was complaining about food and the Lord said he would provide meat for them and Moses reminded him that there were 600,000+ people so…realistically…how was that possible?
The Lord asked: is there any limit to my power? It was asked in a question-like way but it really meant There is No Limit to My Power. Power with no ceiling. Power to do whatever. Absolute power. Which is pretty impressive…unless of course I’m on the receiving end of the power.
If someone else has unlimited power he has the potential to negatively affect me and so at that point I start feeling less impressed with the power and more concerned about the exercise of power. Impressed at first…and then concern sets in.
The day after I read the Numbers story I read: your throne, O God, endures forever and ever. Your royal power is expressed in justice. You love what is right and hate what is wrong.
There’s the story of the powerful king who wanted a guy’s property so he trumped-up charges & put the guy on a show-trial & executed him & then took his land. That’s an example of something the Lord couldn’t possibly do. He has the power to do anything. But his power is only operable if it’s just & fair & impartial. Which is a huge relief.

Note: quotes from Numbers 11:23 & Psalm 45:6-7 (NLT). And see the Ahab-Naboth story 1 Kings 21.

Week 6  Numbers 6

Schedule for Today: Numbers Four-Five-Six.
Four gives instructions to the three families of priests (Kohath & Gershon & Merari) for dismantling and transporting the tabernacle.
Five is the (baffling) Adultery Test. [In the NT the Lord said Moses had given the law of divorce because people had hard-hearts. I don’t know how many laws were created because of hard-heartedness or envy jealousy hatred lust anger pride or like that. But this one sounds like a candidate.]
Six is the Nazarite Vow. This chapter is pretty interesting and so I slow down to look at the elements of an unusual and added-effort vow. Until about half-way through the chapter when I look at my watch. Yikes! My time’s up!
I’ve walked into a bible-reader’s quandary: do I stop right now and come back to it tomorrow…or gallop through and finish the chapter? Executive decision-making time… Since I want to finish the chapter I start speed-reading. And that works okay until I get near the end…
May the Lord bless you and protect you.
May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord show you his favour and give you his peace.
This is one of the great-great paragraphs in the bible and I realize it’s crazy to blast right on through. I pretty much have to slow down. It only takes 15-seconds to read anyway. So I take 30 to read it twice. Slowly.

Note: quote from Numbers 6:24-26 (NIV); see Matthew 19:7-9.

Week 6  Psalm 39

I know a guy whose mom lived to be 104 years old.
Which seems like a very long time.
She would have been born at the end of World War I and lived through the roaring-Twenties
great-Depression
world-war-2
Hiroshima
Chinese-revolution
decolonization
cold-war
space-race
collapse-of-the-Soviet-empire
climate-change
9/11
globalization
decline -of-the-American-empire
cryptocurrency…like that (plus a lot more).
It all seems like a very long time.
Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.
Remind me that…my life is fleeing away.
An entire lifetime is just a moment to you;
Human existence is but a breath.
We are merely moving shadows…
Human existence is as frail as breath.
When it comes to Time it’s kind of crazy comparing Human Time with the Lord’s Time (104 vs. 1 Trillion+ doesn’t even register).
So I don’t really think David’s main point was to compare Time with – basically – Eternity. I think that’s why he ends up focusing on the (very few) years he does actually have:
O Lord…I am your guest – a traveler passing through…Spare me so I can smile again before I am gone and exist no more.
This sounds to me like an I-Don’t-Have-Too-Much-Time Psalm.

Note: quotes from Psalm 39:5-6, 11, 12-13 (NLT)

Week 6  Numbers 1-2

Moses wasn’t in story-telling mode when he started Numbers.
I knew right away I was in bleak country so decided to switch to my Directed Listing Technique (DLT). The DLT is in the same class of bible-reading-assistance techniques as Directed Sketching or Directed Diagramming (Directed Doodling – which is more mindless – is in a related but different class).
Last year I did some Directed Diagramming of Numbers 2 to visually orient myself about Israel’s desert camp. That drone’s-eye sketch-up helped me read in a more focused way.
This year when I read the first list of tribal names I got out a pad of yellow paper and wrote them in a column down the left margin.
Something was fishy. I flipped back to Genesis 29-30 and in my Column 2 listed Jacob’s sons in their birth order. Which was a different order than Column 1.
Column 3 was the second list in Numbers 1 – the military census list. I wrote those names down and saw they were in a different order from Columns 1 & 2.
Then Numbers 2 re-categorized the twelve tribes into a list of four groups of three. This one – Column 4 – was similar to the census list but still slightly different.
I spent a bit of time trying to dope out the differences. But in the end I had my four columns of names in similar – but different – order. And in the end I still had questions.
Which – I decided – was okay. The Directed Listing Technique helped focus my attention (riddle-solving wasn’t its intended function).