If the spiritual life with Jesus was written as a spy novel, what character would you be?

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We are told of an incident in the life of St. Peter. He had a vision of clean and unclean animals being lowered to earth from heaven on a picnic blanket. A divine voice told Peter to eat. In this vision he refused to eat the unclean things. The voice from heaven, though, said, “Don’t say that the things which God has made clean are impure” (Acts 10:15 God’s Word). The vision repeated twice more to emphasize its importance. Read more…

Much fascinates me about the story of Balaam in Numbers 22-24. Even though I did an academic paper on the translation problems the humour still gets me.

The Prophet Balaam and the Ass, by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1626. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Balaam makes a living as a prophet. His use of black magic (or demons) to curse people may well have made him rich.

So when Balak hires him to do a cursing off he goes to earn the big fee.

Unknown to Balaam (who is not a prophet of the True God) he has taken on people protected by Creator. Surprise! God sets out to destroy this enemy of the exodus people. Balaam’s gift of dark  prophecy cannot discern God at work. But, fortunately for him, his donkey has insight and saves his life.

The true prophet speaking for the True God is an ass. I’m laughing, especially as one with that gift. Never take yourself, or your gift, so seriously as to think you have importance beyond membership in the family of God. God doesn’t share credit or glory.

Now, if Jesus replaced you with a jackass, would anyone notice the difference?

I remember the first time I translated the Book of Jonah. One of the projects of a Hebrew language class I took involved the translation of that little Bible book.

In it one discovers a mild profanity, never translated that way that I have found. It happens early so, as you can imagine, most everyone perked up their intellectual ears and paid attention to the details in the story from beginning to end. Read more…

I woke up this afternoon to find my garage sitting on the steps of our back door!

No. I’m not joking. But I didn’t take a picture of it either. Other things filled my attention.

Like, what do I do?

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