The 12 Days of Dedication

I was reading Numbers 7 for my nighttime reading, and every time I read it (all 89 verses, haha, because it's the kind of chapter you feel silly stopping in the middle of, because whatever you read tomorrow will be a carbon copy of what you read tonight!) it rings through my head in a very 12 Days of Christmas style.

Presumably because there are lists of numbered things that were given, and they were given on 12 separate days.  Funny, that.

Anyhow, I've always sort of had it in my head as a song, and tonight realized that it doesn't fit at all.  But, I shall pretty much always sing it as a song when I read it, so I share it here, so you can annoying get the 12 Days of Christmas tune in your head as you read Numbers 7 next.  Because I love to share.  You're welcome.

On the first day of dedication the prince of Judah brought,
One weighty silver charger.

On the second day of dedication the prince of Issachar brought,
One silver bowl
And a weighty silver charger.

On the third day of dedication the prince of Zebulun brought,
One golden spoon,
One silver bowl,
And a weighty silver charger.

On the fourth day of dedication the prince of Reuben brought,
Various fillings,
One golden spoon,
One silver bowl,
And a weighty silver charger.

Okay, so this could go on forever.  And I'm cutting out may important things.  But as I said, this is actually remarkably difficult to condense appropriately.

On the twelfth day of dedication the prince of Naphtali brought,
Five first year lambies,
Five only male goats,
Five off'ring peace rams,
Two off'ring peace oxen,
One goat for sinning,
One first year lambie,
One ram for burning,
One young bullock.
Various fillings,
One golden spoon,
One silver  bowl,
And a weighty silver charger.

Phew.  That is a mouthful, and it leaves out a lot of important details.  And uses the word "lambies" because "lambs" isn't enough syllables.  So go, my friends.  Go forth and read Numbers 7, appreciate the exquisite detail, and feel free to let me know if you find a way to make this passage flow more smoothly (particularly lines that use words like lambies and off'ring)!  I think I'd sleep better at night if I had a version of this song that actually fit to this chapter!

Eshcol's Grapes

The other night at dinner we were reading Numbers 13, and it took us quite a while to read through the whole chapter.  We kept getting very distracted (nothing unusual) and eventually my dad pretty much fell asleep at the table.  That was when we decided we'd pretty much exhausted every possible avenue of discussion about the chapter.

First I had to remark that I thought it was weird that Moses just sort of renamed Joshua in verse 16.  Then my mother was a tad appalled because it was adding the word Jehovah to the name, which is a good thing, and not weird.  My poor parents.

Then in verse 22 there's a random addition regarding Hebron.  It goes, "(Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)"  So then we had to discuss for some time why exactly this was important.  I mean, Egypt is a picture of the world in the Bible, and seven is a much-loved number of perfection, but when you put those pieces together, does it mean something deep and important?  We didn't decide.

We took a break partway through dinner to use the dictionary to look up something about gifts, though I recall not what.



Then we got to verse 23, which is a verse about Eshcol's grapes, and we had to all share our story of when we first had the eureka moment as to what this hymn by Mary Bowley actually meant.  Pretty much when I was young I didn't get it, because, the line goes, "The manna and the springing well suffice for every need; and Eshcol's grapes the story tell of where Thy path doth lead," and as a kid that was not enough.  Because Eshcol's grapes were telling a story about where the path did lead, but let's be honest, unless you know the story of the grapes, that doesn't make the most sense ever.



My friend and I aren't eating Eshcol's Grapes,
but rather grapes in Romania one time.  Mmm.



Anyhow.  I just wrote a bunch of stuff about God's way being the best way etc. but then when I tried to add that nifty picture of my friend and I eating Romanian grapes it deleted my last paragraph.  So now I'm done.  But anyhow, pictures make a blog much more spruced, so I figure I should try to put pictures up from time to time.  At least enough so my blog isn't so blase... 

200

Today is the second day of the month.  Two.  A nice number.  Most especially since today is (drum roll, please) my 200th post!

Can you tell I have nothing to say?

Except that (wait for it!) I gave my two weeks' notice at my job (!) and the Lord immediately gave me something new with which to occupy my time.  I knew He'd provide something.  And I feel peace about it.

So happy December 2, my friends.  May the next two hundred posts find you well, and at peace.

By the dozen

I won't bore you with my regular introduction of "we have the best family dinners ever," but last week we had a particularly funny episode that I'll recount in part.

So, we were were talking about the old-timey way of hanging people (throwing them up on stakes on a wall, just in case you were curious), and other random things like why my brother and I long misunderstood Ezekiel 4, and eventually we started talking about clocks. This is because we have a heinous clock that chirps, hoots, and makes other bird noises ever hour, on the hour. It's awful. I took the batteries out one time, but my mom actually likes the clock, so she found new batteries and now the clock is as loud as ever. This is fine, as we say, because what makes her happy makes us happy, but during supper we kept hearing it (it ended up being a long supper, so we heard the clock at least twice, and possibly even three times) and it was quite the topic of conversation.

That brought us to the thought that we should manufacture a clock with the twelve disciples on it! By the way, this may seem like a confusing train of thought to you, but we were talking about clocks, and we'd been talking about hanging people, and Judas was a disciple, and he hanged himself... well, somehow this made sense to us.

So anyhow, we had great discussion about how the clock would look. Would it have sounds for each disciple? Like Matthew, being a tax collector, would have clinky money sounds, and John would have some angelic sound, and Peter and the fishermen-type guys would have... fish sounds. Well, we decided that maybe the disciples wouldn't get sounds after all. But then there was the discussion of where we'd put the disciples. Who would get the 12:00 spot, right at the top of the clock? I voted Peter, but there was significant pull for John. Then we questioned if Judas should even get a slot. Maybe we could stick Matthias instead of Judas. My brother, of course, thought that perhaps we could have Judas at the 6:00 slot, and the clock could show the rope hanging him.

My mom wasn't impressed.

After a while we thought maybe we should just skip the disciples (too much drama!) and just do the twelve tribes. Of course, then there's the discussion about which tribe you should leave out (remember, Joseph got two tribes), and then we started all over again.

I Googled "twelve disciples wall clock" later, sure I'd find that somebody had already invented it, and to my surprise, didn't find anything. I looked only casually, but the closest I could find was a Last Supper clock and an old clock in Prague with the twelve on there, but it's an old clock, and not for sale. Also, there's a rock formation in Australia called The Twelve Apostles, and you can get clocks with the rock formation on the face, but that is, in fact, no help at all.

So one day if you wander into a Christian bookstore and see a twelve disciples clock, well, perhaps it was I, who somehow managed to finagle a deal to design clocks. It could happen!

100

I just realized that this is my 100th post in the year 2010, and I was rather pleased to realize that. All of my deep thoughts about wisdom were thrown out of the window and I decided instead to take a moment and just point out to all y'all that even though I'm terrible at keeping up, that somewhat of an accomplishment, right?

Then again, when you consider that this is actually the 291st day of the year, you might stop to think about those nearly-two hundred days of the year I haven't posted, and then this seems way less cool.

Either way, happy hundredth post to me!

Spread it with a little margin

I love reading the margins in my Bible. I'd guess I've read very nearly every footnote my Bible has to offer, on account of reading the marginal notes along with the actual text when I read. But I recently came across a good one in Numbers 4. The verse (23, for starters, in case you want to look it up, though actually, several verses in this chapter use this same word) was about entering in to perform the service, to do the work in the tabernacle of the congregation.

Well, instead of just being "service" right there, it's really the Hebrew root word for going out to war. And it sort of makes sense, since now-a-days it's not uncommon to hear someone say, "I was in the Service for six years back in the fifties." We call the military the Service these days, so I guess it makes sense that it all stems from each other.

But I just thought it was hilarious that the word was the same. I'm not typically one to grouse about work, but the point is, work is work. You may be in charge of animal sacrifices (like in this chapter), or you may be the person who checks the chlorine levels at the neighbourhood pool. Either way, sometimes crazy stuff can happen. Half the time it's like organized warfare.

The other thing I was thinking was this: you know how the Levites just did the tabernacle stuff, and didn't go out to war? Well, if this is sort of like war, then did they get to skip out of work for a year after they got married? Because the rest of the tribes got a get-out-of-war-free pass for a year after they tied the knot, so why not the Levites? Their version of war was service in the tabernacle, but hey, no fair that those young dudes from the tribe of Simeon got time off for finding a wife, and the Levites didn't, you know?

Not like life is fair. Or that it was "fair" for the Levites to be the only ones to be consecrated to the work of the Lord. They were just stand-ins, so to speak, for all the firstborn from all the tribes, after all.

So now, in my head, whenever the Levites got married, they were off work duty for a year. I'll get confirmation (or deconfirmation) of it when I get to Heaven, I'm sure, but the thought amused me. Quite frankly, I'd never noticed that verse before.

Isn't reading the Bible grand? Something new every day. I love it!

One hundred twenty-five

For some reason I noticed that this is my 125th post, and instead of just smiling and carrying forth, I decided to see what interesting things are associated with the number 125 and discovered that the Pantheon was built in the year 125! I'm not sure why this seemed so interesting to me, however, the thought of one day soon seeing such an old place (Europe this summer, huzzah!) struck me as awesome.

So, I had to write that, instead of something witty or profound. Ah, well, I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to hit upon the witty or profound anyhow.

Also in the year 125 a Christian by the name of Thamel was martyred, along with his sister, by the emperor Hadrian. Huh.

Yamaha has a bike, the Zume 125, that is, according to the reports, "amazing." It looks sort of weird to me, but gets up to 89 mpg, so I guess you can't argue with that.

In May of last year the STS-125, was the NASA space shuttle that was the last one sent to service the Hubble Space Telescope. What I thought was cool about this was that I read about the wake-up music that they play the crew aboard these spacecrafts. Apparently each day a different track is played at the start of each day, typically chosen by the family of the specific crew members. On this particular mission, the song God of Wonders (by Third Day) was chosen and played on the fifth day for mission member Michael Good. Nicely done, Michael Good's family.

Five cubed, obviously.

Opus 125 was a symphony by Beethoven, which ended up being his last complete symphony, in fact, and the first symphony ever to use a chorus. Who knew?

In my Bible, page 125 has the last part of Numbers chapter 7, which is very long and repetitive. When our family reads it together for Bible reading, we each take a "section" and try to read it in one breath. After a while all the spoons, lambs, kids, bowls, and fine flour ends up jumbling together into a mass of words. I've tried for years to set that portion to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas (due to it being the twelve days the princes came and dedicated the alter), but you have to sing terribly quickly to get that accomplished.

And finally, penal code 125 is the code they use for speeding. Good to know, I'm sure.