Thoughts

I was thinking some , and reading some today, and I noticed a few things that might seem kinda obvious. I'm doing this thing where I swap between reading a chapter of old testament, and a chapter of new testament day by day, and reading the old testament is kinda different. I suppose that's another blog though. At any rate, I was looking back over how man in general, and israel has messed up, and it's so sad, but also almost funny how dumb we can all be, but also kinda beautiful that God still loves us and gives us our 45292th chance when we screw up. As we all know, God gave us the perfect world, and we decided to turn away.  kaplowy, our first big mess up. Cain gets jealous and kills Abel. Another big mess up. Most everyone on the face of the planet (except for noah and his family) decide to do whatever they want, and there has to be a flood.

The israelites eventually become enslaved by egypt, and suffer years and years and years of horrible slavery. Through moses, God delivered the Israelites using amazing miracles that would probably make my head explode if I actually saw them. He leads them through the Red sea, and drowns all the egyptians chasing them. He then leads them through the wilderness using a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. I think I would have liked the fire one better, that one sounds pretty awesome to me. But I guess cloud would be pretty sweet too! And after three days, they have not had any water, and begin to grumble against Moses. I can really relate to that, I mean, sometimes when things don't happen when I want them to, or when I expect them to, I know I can lose sight of God's omniscience. Like God's gonna come back and say "Sorry, I was on the phone, what did I miss?" But he always knows what we're going through, and went through it, and worse, himself. I guess me and the Israelites lose sight of that sometimes. They finally hit the promised land, and God has said to them that he will deliver the people currently occupying it into their hands. But the guys currently occupying it are giants. Huge guys. The people Moses sent to spy on the promised land come back, and with a few exceptions, tell the Israelites that it's all over, the current tennants are freaking garganuan, we're doomed. And for this, they have to wander in the wilderness for 40 more years. They set up a king against God's better judgement, eventually, and here's the part that I realised today. 

I often have a bit of trouble meshing the old testament and the new testament together. I kinda forget sometimes that the pharasees and jews that jesus spoke to were the same Israelites that the nation of Israel was in the old testament. So, God sends his son to earth, to show us the way, and we killed him. It'd be like someone calling you up, telling you they need someone to talk to, and then beating the crap out of you when you showed up, yelling  "Burglar! Burglar!" I don't know, it just kinda hit me that we turned away from God, killed his creations, lived for ourselves, grumbled against him after all he had done for us, set up our own king, and then what's the topper? We actually took his son and nailed him to a piece of wood in one of the most gruesome and excruciating deaths imaginable. And he still loves us. Sometimes I find it easy to believe God is Love, because he actually acts like Love. All the time. We turn against him and spit in his eye and do all sorts of awful things to him and each other, but he still wants us to be with him and likes us. There's no way for him to act outside of Love. Sometimes that Love might manifest itself in ways we might not understand, like a flood, or 3 days without water, but he is Love, and Loves us completely. It's absolutely crazy how awesome that is.