Old Testament severity

"And now, O priests, this command is for you. If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the LORD of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and you shall be taken away with it. So shall you know that I have sent this command to you, that my covenant with Levi may stand, says the LORD of hosts. (Malachi 2:1-4)

The author is reminding his audience of the curses of Deuteronomy 28:15-68 and Leviticus 26:14-39. He is also foreshadowing Jesus:

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:35-40)

I suppose that the smart-alek lawyer must have been thinking about Malachi 2 and Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 when Jesus reminded him that the law and Prophets are all about loving and revering God with all your being. I guess that must have shut that guy up pretty effectively.
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These passages me glad of a few things. Not the least of which include:

• I'm not a priest.
• For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:19-20)

The burden of the Messenger

My current study that I am doing is Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. After I finish with Malachi I will be reading Ephesians.


I think the first line of the book is interesting, particularly in the KJV:

The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi. (Malachi 1:1)

Seems pretty straightforward until you find out that the author is unknown. It is not clear whether Malachi was the author’s name or his job title. Apparently the word translates to something like, “The Messenger."
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Also interesting is the use of the word, “burden” in the KJV to refer to the prophetic message given to this messenger. This lends a solemnity and importance to the message to come. It was apparently no fun being God’s messenger during those days.

John Christopher's Tripods

Another series that I am re-reading is the (4-part) John Christopher Tripods trilogy. At least it was a trilogy.  But it was so intensely popular that the author ended up writing a prequel a decade or so after the third book was published.

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As a kid I remember a school librarian recommending this trilogy to me. I loved it, just like she’d figured I would. Then some years later I remember the monthly Boy Scouts magazine, Boys Life, serialized it as a long-running comic strip - one page per month.

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The story is about an alien invasion of these creeps that drive around in giant mechanical tripodal walkers with tentacles and enslave the world using these mind-control caps that they make folks wear. Well, it turns out that they only cap folks over the age of 13, so nearly the only free folks left in the world to mount a rebellion are teenagers. Cool premise. Equally cool books. I have just finished reading the prequel, When the Tripods Came and a now working on The White Mountains.

Finished reading The Grounding of Group 6

Well, I received and read my new copy of The Grounding of Group 6.  Pretty cool trip on the wayback machine!  As I was writing a few weeks ago, I read this book when I was early teen and parts of it have stuck with me ever since then.  I wouldn't sayit had the staying power of something like Ender's Game, but it made a lasting impression.  And it wasn't just me.  Somaserious was able to tell me the name of the book after a sparse description and she seemed to agree that it was a really cool book.

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Even having read it before, the book surprised me in places.  I didn't remember all the teen sexual tension in the book and I didn't remember the funny, inane adults in the book.  And the end took me completely by surprise (again).

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It is much as I remembered it and parts were even better as an adult than as a kid.  I'd recomend getting a copy and settling down to be alternately thrilled and amused.

Richard Cone “Dick” Moore

Richard Cone “Dick” Moore, 72, of McComb, died July 24, 2008, at Beacham Memorial Hospital in Magnolia.  Mr. Moore was born Jan. 9, 1936, in Lake Village, Ark., to Glynn H. and George Evelyn Cone Moore.  He spent most of his youthful years in Jonesville, La., and graduated valedictorian from Chamberlain-Hunt Academy in Port Gibson in 1953.

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He was commissioned an ensign in the U.S. Navy upon graduation from Ole Miss on May 26, 1957. He served 20 years in the Navy with duty stations in Athens, Ga.; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Key West, Fla.; Subic Bay and Cubi Point Naval Air Station, the Philippines; Richmond, Va.; Rota, Spain; Charleston, S.C.; Monterey, Calif.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Norfolk, Va.

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He earned his master’s degree at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey in December 1969. Following his Navy career he worked as an auditor for Exxon USA in Houston, Texas, for eight years. He was a certified public accountant in the state of Texas.

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In June 1985, he and his wife moved to McComb to assume management of the family business, McComb Electric Supply Co.

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He was active in the McComb Rotary Club for more than 20 years and served as a board member of the Pike County Arts Council for seven years. While president of the Pike County Chamber of Commerce in 1990, he was instrumental in the formation of the McComb Main Street program and served on that board for several years. In 1991, he was chosen as the Enterprise-Journal Citizen of the Year and was named Small Business of the Year in 2004.

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Mr. Moore was a former elder at J.J. White Presbyterian Church and a charter member, elder and trustee of New Covenant Presbyterian Church.

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He was an avid gardener, especially loving his rose garden. He enjoyed traveling worldwide and was an ardent historian and reader.

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He was preceded in death by his parents and grandparents, Dr. and Mrs. Andrew E. Cone of Portland, Ark., and Mr. and Mrs. Dank Moore of Little Rock.  He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Stephanie Klotz Moore of McComb; one son and daughter-in-law, Richard C. Moore Jr. and Dolly of McComb; one daughter and son-in-law, Betsy Moore Nelson and Paul of Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash.; four adored grandchildren, Kristen and Dan Moore of McComb, and Lacy and Matthew Nelson of Fairchild Air Force Base; and special cousins Gene and Meredith Wilbourn of Conway, Ark., Tom and Ann Bridgers of Little Rock, and Theresa Grimes Streibich of Memphis, Tenn.

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In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorials be made to the Building Fund of New Covenant Presbyterian Church, P.O. Box 896, McComb, MS 39649 or Chamberlain-Hunt Academy, 124 McComb Ave., Port Gibson, MS 39150.

Don't get tired of doing good

Well, I’m done with my Galatians read-thru. Galatians has so much good in it that There’s no way I can summarize it in any reasonable amount of time, but one of the most interesting things that stuck with me was right at the end of the book.

I don’t know about you all but I sure get tired of doing good sometimes and I need this exhortation. I need this one buried in my brain as a counter to that sin nature.

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. (Galatians 6:9-10)

Mysogynist Paul?

There are these folks that like to say that Paul was just a homophobic mysogynist and so we shouldn't pay much attention to what he wrote. I thought about these mysogynist claims when we came across the beginning of 1Timothy5 a while back...

Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity. (1Timothy5:1-2)

Doesn't sound mysogynist to me. I have met real, honest-to-goodness woman-haters before and they didn't tend to say things like, "You ought to treat women like you treat your mother and your sister - in all purity."

Funniest book I've ever read

Ok, so you've seen the movie Forrest Gump and it was funny and touching and all that. Well the book is all that and a million times more. Many of the episodes from the movie are somewhat representative of the book, but the second half of the book goes off in a whole different direction with wilder and wilder episodes. Did you know that Forrest was a NASA astronaut? Stranded on a desert island with native cannibals? A professional wrestler and a chess master! A Hollywood actor. This is definitely the funniest book I've ever read. Right now I'm working on the sequel, Gump & Co. and laughing out loud at Gump's dumb ass.

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My wife has a knack for reading aloud and she is doing a great job reading these two books to me. Please buy your copy from my Amazon store, and prepare to laugh yourself senseless.

The Repentant Peter

El Greco is one of my favorite artists. This is his The Repentant Peter. Something about the long faces and the eyes in all of El Greco's paintings ... captivating.

Lois Lowry's The Giver

So I said that I would review Lois Lowry next. The obvious first choice to read is the Newberry Award winning The Giver. This book is about a society that has given up some of its humanity in order to have a utopia without poverty, crime, sickness, etc... In this setting, the protagonist, Jonas, is the apprentice to the Giver, an old man whose job it is to remember all the terrible things that they don't have to live with, like the pain of sunburn. But other memories that the Giver holds so the people don't have to experience are things like laying in the sun or riding a sled in the snow. Of course, Jonas realizes that this system is askew and the plot develops from there.

The Giver has been compared to Brave New World as well as John Christopher's Tripods series. I would highly recommend it if you enjoy dystopian sci-fi with a mystical feel.