well, the Lord provided just over 21 hours of work in january for which i'm grateful. joel and jan just called to ask for some help painting their bathroom so i hope to get over there tomorrow evening to see what's involved.
got all my taxes done and paid so that's a good feeling. this month besides working on that i have dedicated quite a bit of time to finally getting the filing system in order. i'm getting there but it's a big job. i'm praying that the Lord will give me the insight into how to set it up so that i am able to retrieve what i'm looking for in an efficient manner.
the month has been extremely cold to me maybe because i have been running a no-heat-in-the- house experiment remembering that uncle hugh had only activated his heat when the water in the toilets began to skim over with ice. actually there is heat. i just keep the thermostats set at the bottom (40 degrees) and in theory, if it gets to 40 then the furnace will keep it there. the thermometer got as low as 41 in the back of the house but so far the furnace has not operated other than when eddie turns it on for an hour or so to warm his room (kept so with the door closed). in catching my bank statements up i realized that though i had contracted over the phone with the oil company for 300 gallons at about $4.40 a gallon, just over $1300, they had failed to complete the transaction. so i took that as a miracle of God's watchcare over me. my decision to try to not turn the heat on unwittingly turned out to be very helpful. we still have between a quarter and half a tank left and so, Lord willing, will be able to get thru without buying any oil this year.
the other day when eating it came to me that when i am eating something i enjoy (which is everything i eat!) that my heart needs to turn from the flavor to the One who made the flavor and be grateful. also, it came to me this week how much of my experience with the church has had one layer we could call 'display', the great desire to see and be seen. as usual, as in so many things, this has been spiritualized as the desire to 'minister' to others. the Lord led me to pray specifically that this week there might be a total focus on Him during worship - thinking about every word sung, spoken, heard in an attempt to have Him magnified above me. it went ok today in the first experiment. hadn't realized how much i paid attention to the sound and volume of the voice and to many other things other than Him alone. may You help me Lord to truly come into Your house and focus only on You hopefully so that petitions and praise of a more genuine nature will come to You. was reminded again this week why heaven is anticipated. if we are made in God's image and we have a sense of humor wouldn't it stand to reason that among all the quitessences of God He would have to have the best sense of humor around! that's one of the many things that will make being with him at close range amazing.
gerard-that's his irish given name- actually gerry, a fellow who pickets and prays at the warminster planned parenthood said on friday that God propitiates but doesn't expiate. i haven't had an opportunity to look at the first but did a word study on the second this morning which is about 90% complete and learned some interesting things. my memory of propitiation is that it refers to Jesus' sacrifice of Himself which satisfied God's wrath. the english word expiation only occurs once in the old testament. looking that up in strong's concordance i learned that the hebrew word is kaphar which was defined: to cover over, pacify, make propitiation and it's root kopher: the price of a life, ransom. so it seems just from that that somehow propitiation and expiation are parts of one whole. then i got the hebrew lexicon and looked up the appearances of kaphar in the old testament.
it is first used in genesis 32:20 where jacob APPEASES esau with a present when he comes back to palestine. then it occurs a good number of times in exodus 29-30 and in leviticus 4-10 in references to ATONEMENT being made for the priests who were to offer the sacrifice, the altar where the sacrifices where offered and the people whose sin moved them to bring their innocent animals as sacrifices in accordance with the stipulations of the law. the overall focus in all this is the blood of the innocent animals which is summed up in leviticus 17:11 - 'for the life of the flesh is in the blood, and i have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for you souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement'. interestingly atonement is used for the scapegoat (the animal that was let go into the wilderness who symbolizes how the Lord removed the sins as far as the east is from the west), in numbers 5:8 it is used in a situation with confession of and restitution for the sin involved, of one who failed (sinned) unwittingly (15;22,25) and in a situation where, discovering that the people had not fulfilled the law's requirements for eating the passover, king hezekiah prayed, 'the Lord pardon' and their sin was atoned. later king david said to the gibeonites, whose men king saul had unjustly slaughtered, 'how can i make atonement that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord?'
MONDAY A.M. as with many things in the old testment law they are simple teaching pictures. the innocent animals' blood is the picture of Jesus' innocent blood. hebrews 10.1f says for the law having a shadow of good things to come and not the very image of the things can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers perfect. for then would they not have ceased to be offered? because the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. but in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. wherefore when Jesus cometh into the world, He saith, 'sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou prepared Me. in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleasure.' then said I, 'lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do Thy will, o God. so john the baptist rightly said of Jesus when he first saw Him, 'behold the lamb of God Who taketh away the sin of the world'.
king david seems to have seen that there was something more than killing innocent animals. in ps. 65.3 he says 'as for our transgressions Thou shalt purge (kaphar) them away'. ps. 78.38 says, 'but He, being full of compassion, forgave (kaphar) their iniquity'. ps. 79.9 'help us oh God of our salvation...and purge away our sins, FOR THY NAME'S SAKE. i could go on thru the rest but time fails. we quiquagenarians can get wordy sometimes!
this morning i was missing the little reddened cross i wear around my neck. last week i lost the pack of ephesians verse cards i am currently trying to memorize. when i was completing my letter to the editor of the souderton independent earlier inexplicably a single sentence added during my reread of the letter for some weird reason refused to 'stick' to the amended published text - not once but twice...sigh. i think i am having the beginnings of 'going off the edge' like mom did...sigh. it came to just accept what happens..commit it to Me...don't fret..don't 'need' anything you don't 'have'. alright, well if i'm still sane, Lord willing, i'll be talkin' to you by e again. have a good week. love, dad
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