Blogging Bible Study: Digging in the Desert -- The Desert Strongholds of David

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

The next mention of  'Desert' is in 1 Samuel 23:14 - 15

David stayed in the desert strongholds and in the hills of the Desert of Ziph.  Day after day Saul searched for him, but God did not give David into his hands.  While David was at Horesh in the Desert of Ziph, he heard that Saul had come out to take his life.

Have a fresh look at the header picture that I've been using for this series.  Based on the Zondervan NIV Atlas, that picture was taken south of the Desert of Ziph...looking north.     A map plaque on the overlook we were on had a marker on it for 'Carmel'...which confused me and I asked about it.  Once the guides understood my question,  they replied that there is a small town named Carmel in the area; it certainly wasn't Mount Carmel, which is way, way, way off to the north and west.  But...the atlas shows the town of Carmel on the boundary of the Desert of Ziph/ Desert of Maon/Negev of Caleb.  So that picture was taken in the immediate area of David's desert wanderings, most certainly in what was considered the Desert of Maon, according to the maps.

David and his men could very easily have stood on that exact hilltop at some point.

It's an interesting read in the first thirteen verses of the chapter to get the context for why David was roaming the desert at this point.  He had gone to the village of Keliah and fought off their Philistine attackers, on the word of the Lord.  Saul heard he was there, gloated that David had holed up in a walled city, and called for his troops to go lay siege to the city.  David got wind of it, inquired of God, who told him that the people of the city would certainly hand him over to Saul (grateful folks, no?).  So David and his men became nomads again.

Look again at that photo.  It would be impossible to find someone who was hiding in those hills.  Not that Saul didn't try.  Jonathan, however, somehow managed to find out where David was and went to see him while he was at Horesh (v. 16)  He encouraged David, declaring that Saul would not succeed in killing him; that David would be the next king of Israel and he, Jonathan,  would be second to him.  And it was all good with Jonathan.  But...Jonathan returned to his father's camp.

Had Jonathan stayed with David, he would have been in rebellion against his dad...but he would not have been in the battle at Gilboa, where he died, along with Saul.  He could have stayed...but he didn't.  That was the last time the two closer-than-brothers-friends saw each other.

Of course, the locals tried to win brownie points with Saul so they told him that David was near Horesh.  Saul sent them out to track him down for him, and identify all the places he used as camps. (V. 22)

 So they set out and went  to Ziph ahead of Saul.  Now David and his men were in the Desert of Maon, in the Arabah south of Jeshimon.  Saul and his men began the search, and when David was told about it, he went down to the rock and stayed in the Desert of Maon.  When Saul heard this,  he went into the Desert of Maon in pursuit of David   (24-25)

So we have David and his men moving about in that crazy terrain, with Saul and his men trying to track them down.  Verse 26 reports that the chase was getting desperate; David and his men were on one side of a mountain, with Saul and his men on the other side when suddenly a messenger came to Saul and reported that the Philistines were raiding the land...taking advantage of the preoccupation of the king, no doubt.  So Saul broke off the pursuit to go deal with the Philistines and the place was nicknamed 'Sela Hammahlekoth' ('rock of parting', according to the marginal notes in my NIV).  The NIV atlas says that the location of this place is not known, but it is 'probably E or SE of Maon'.

Then we read in 24:1

After Saul returned from pursuing the Philistines,  he was told , "David is in the Desert of En Gedi."

There is a bit of a valley to the west of the hilly area where the header photo was taken; that's where the oasis is where we spent a night; I thought I had a blog post about the oasis but it's split into two bits. Here's a photo, taken from the bus after we had gone through Arad and were headed southeast...

Why is that significant?   Well, I've a footnote in my Scofield that reads, "Desert of En Gedi: of the kid. The area west of  the Dead Sea containing an oasis where David and his men took refuge while running from Saul."

Y'all.  That was the oasis.  Today, it's known as Kfar Hanokdim.  But it HAS to be the place.   Reading the maps and the list of places...David and his men traipsed over the hills on both sides of the valley and no doubt crossed it.    I am pretty sure that the high spot on the horizon is Masada.

David was all over this area.

And one of the most famous encounters between Saul and David happened on the other side of that ridge behind the oasis.

See, there was a cave there, behind a waterfall at a spring.

Saul had chased David to that point but couldn't quite pin him down.  He felt the need to ...take care of some business...so he went into the cave for a little privacy. (24:3)

Well, the cave, at that time, was really, really big (there has been something that has happened in the meantime...either there was a landslide that filled it in or it was deliberately sealed or maybe both.  I am not remembering what our tour guide told us...).  Like, big enough to hold 600 fugitives.  But Saul didn't explore the cave...he was focused on what he needed to do.  I think he must have taken off his robe and laid it over some rocks or something away from where he was occupied, because David crept up and cut a bit off the bottom of the robe without Saul noticing. (24:4)

After Saul had finished and walked back down, David went to the mouth of the cave and called down to Saul, showing him that he could have killed him but didn't.  Saul, conscience-stricken, wept, apologized, and asked David to swear that he would not wipe out Saul's descendants.  David gave his oath, and Saul headed home.  Saul couldn't be trusted, but there was at least a respite in the chase. (24:22...and the 'stronghold' mentioned may well have been Masada).


Reading over this, I probably threw in way too many geographical references.  But I can't begin to describe the awe of reading through this narrative and realizing...I was in that place.   And I still carry the wonder of it.  It was the event that put a desire to chase the desert through the scripture in my heart.  The narrative speaks so lightly of David and his men moving from place to place...but that was no small trick.  I can't imagine moving a company of 600 men...plus their families, possibly, plus some livestock, possibly, through such terrain.  But it was their way of life; they were sojourners in the desert... for a season.

How should we pray for revival?

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

I have heard it (well, technically I guess I saw it on a social media post) again...a call to 'assail heaven' with prayer for revival. 

And I believe the heart of the person who wrote that is right; they truly want to see God move in our land.

But...'assail' is typically a word used for attacking an enemy camp.  Something about that doesn't seem quite...aligned...

See, God told us what to do when we need revival.

It wasn't... 'If my people will bombard me with requests to send revival'.
It wasn't... 'If my people will forward a facebook meme to everyone on social media'.
It wasn't... 'If my people will elect the right political candidates'.
It wasn't... 'If my people will will express righteous indignation at the actions of unbelievers'.
It wasn't... 'If my people will send large amount of money to large ministries'

It was...'If my people, who are called by my name (Um, hello, Christians) will humble THEMSELVES, and pray and seek my face and turn from THEIR wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive THEIR sin and heal their land.' (2 Chron. 7:14).

Prayer...even travailing prayer... is certainly in that description, but it's not begging God for revival.  It's confession and repentance.   I have to confess MY sin and turn from MY wickedness.

I am convinced that revival comes when people are positioned for it.  It makes no sense that God would withhold his Spirit from his people just because they haven't asked him with enough fervor.   Scripture is full of God's willingness to pour his spirit out and call people to repentance (that's what revival is, at it's heart, right? ); why would he NOT move at any opportunity to do just that?

Maybe we have the wrong idea of what revival is.  Maybe we think revival is getting the folks who don't think like me...to think like me.  Maybe we think revival is weird things happening in a service...like feathers falling from the ceiling or some such thing. Maybe we think revival means things will go back to being like it used to be...when biblical morality was the socially accepted norm and not considered close-minded bigotry, just so believers can be comfortable in their communities instead of feeling at odds with those who are not the least bit interested in following God or the standards he gave.

We overlook that some of the deepest movements of the spirit, some of the purest expressions of faith, came in times of extreme persecution, when it was not only not comfortable to be an evangelic believer...it was hazardous.

As it is right now in some parts of the world, I would like to point out.  American Christians pout because someone ...who doesn't believe and doesn't understand...behaves as if Christians were unimportant to their customer base or target audience.  There are folks in other countries who are dying....who are watching their families murdered, their churches burned...because they follow Jesus.

But we, in our comfort-driven Christianity in America, seem to think that revival means that everyone will recognize that we were right and adjust their attitudes (and voting) accordingly.

Can I just hypothesize that if being comfortable in our culture is our motive...even deep down, where it doesn't show...we're not ready for revival.

Here's what I think I need to pray...

I need to confess the inclination I have to be lazy and detached.  I need to give up the idols of 'comfort' and 'security'.  I need to repent my selfish thinking, and my judgmental attitudes towards others.  I need to give up the need to express myself and make my thoughts heard (and I wonder even now if this blog post is part of that...). 

Confess my sins.  Turn away from my wickedness.

And maybe I need to just start off by confessing I don't have the strength to do that and asking for the grace to do those things...and especially for the insight to see the sins I pretend I don't have and the wickedness that I rationalize as something else.

Ouch.  This hurts, y'all, because it's real and I KNOW I am loathe to give up comfortable.  But I kinda have a feeling that if I don't willingly give it up...it's gonna get taken anyway. And that may be what revival looks like in this time...stripping away everything that really isn't important in the light of the kingdom, taking away all our security blankets and pleasurable distractions so that all we have left is God, so we will know that God is enough.



God...make me ready for revival.  Purge, purify, strengthen. Teach me to let go of anything that is not you.  Let me be honest with myself to see my real motives...and turn my heart away from any motive that is selfish in any way.  Keep my heart tuned to you, teach me to see what my reaction should be in everyday circumstances, so that I learn to do what you are doing. Cleanse my heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.  Make me wholly yours.

Blogging Bible Study: Digging in the Desert - Heading into 1st Samuel

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai  Roi

Last week we looked at 'Desert' in the book of Judges; there is not a single reference to 'desert' in the little book of Ruth so that brings us to the 'First and Seconds' of the Old Testament, starting with 1 Samuel.  The desert references are rather spotty, up to chapter 23, which has a fair number, so I'm going to let chapter 23 stand as a discussion all by itself and we'll look at the 'desert' mentions in the first 22 chapters today.

Don't panic.  There are only three.

The first one is historical...but from a different perspective.  It's 4:8, but for context, I'm going to start in verse 6b:

When they learned that the ark of the LORD had come into the camp, the Philistines were afraid. "A god has come into the camp," they said "We're in trouble!  Nothing like this has happened before.  Woe to us!  Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods?  They are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the desert."

A very rough ballpark estimate is that this was something like 300 years since the Exodus.  So, even in that time, it would be pretty distant history.

But the remarkable thing that hits me here..every other place we've seen 'desert' mentioned as history, it's the Israelites reminding themselves of what happened there.  This time...it's the Philistines, Israel's rather constant enemy in those days. THEY are the ones who bring up what the God of Israel did in the desert.  Of course, they have lots of details wrong...it wasn't a conglomeration of gods, it was one God; the plagues hit the Egyptians in their homes, not in the desert; the ark wasn't actually even a deity at all...but still.  They knew that the Israelites worshiped someone who was truly powerful and if that Someone took action against them...they were toast.

What they didn't know was that the Israelites were acting on their own,as they had at Ai, when they first entered the land, which guaranteed the Philistines were going to whoop their collective tail.  In fact, God had already prophesied such through the youngster Samuel.  It was a lesson the Israelites were about to learn all over again:  They only succeed when God is with them.  Or, rather, they only succeed when they are with God.  Because God wasn't going to be manipulated.  The priests took the Ark to battle, without even consulting God ,  and that's all they took.  They did not take God's presence or his blessing.  And the Philistines did, indeed, whoop their collective tail...and they took the Ark to Ashdod in Philistia as plunder.  THAT started a whole 'nuther chain of events in which God acted to protect the symbol of his covenant with Israel, but 'desert' doesn't come into that bit of the story.

The next reference of desert is in 13:18...and it is simply geographical.  Starting in verse 17 for context again (because it hurts my head to start a quote in the middle of a sentence)...

Raiding parties went out from the Philistine camp in three detachments.  One turned toward Ophrah in the vicinity of Shual, another toward Beth Horon, and the third toward the borderland overlooking the Valley of Zeboin facing the desert.

This is just a description of where the enemy Saul and the Israelites were up against...yes, still the same bad guys, the Philistines...attacked the people.

The third reference to 'desert' in the first 22 chapters of 1 Samuel shows up in 17:28 -

When Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, "Why have you come down here?  And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert?  I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle."

This time, the reference is meant to scorn David,  reminding him that his place is in the desert with the sheep.  But Eliab had forgotten that coming out of the desert means one is positioned for victory.

Ok, true confession time.  That sentence just came out of my fingers without me really thinking about it and smacked me in the face.

Coming out of the desert, one is positioned for victory.

That may be a concept that we'll watch over as we continue along here.  So far...Moses came out of the desert to take on Pharaoh and release the people; Joshua led the people out of the desert into the land of promise...now, David came out of the desert to show a loud-mouthed giant that he was no match for a kid with a slingshot and the blessing of Israel's God.

We already know that the purpose of going through the desert is to learn to rely on God for everything  One who learns that is certainly poised for success.

I will be pondering this for a bit.

A Different Sort of Easter

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

As so many  have pointed out, this Resurrection Sunday has many similarities to the first...everyone holed up at home.  But we did have the ability to watch our church services online, so we did.  Then, we finished something we have been watching all week, one episode a night.

Earlier this year, I began to see social media posts about something new...a series of videos about Jesus.  The pictures and initial clips I saw didn't grab me; won't go into the reasons why but it was mostly just that I didn't have time to explore it.  Then someone mentioned that it was done by the same folks who did a short Christmas video about a shepherd threeish years ago.  I'd seen that video and thought it was very well done, and began to be curious about the series.  I watched some of the short 'about the series' videos, but when I saw this one, I suddenly realized that this was something that had a focus on God that made it different than I originally thought.  Episodes 1-4 are available free on the Chosen app, but it was crowd-funded, and sales of DVD's were funding the next series (episodes 9-16).  I didn't want to watch the productions without contributing, so I ordered the DVD series, with the intention to watch it during Holy Week.

We watched Episode 1 on Palm Sunday, and one episode a night, then watched the final episode after this morning's church broadcast.

Then we went to the Chosen You tube channel and binge-watched the behind-the-scenes videos.

I cannot begin to tell you how impressed we all were with the whole production. Not just the finished product, but the whole heart behind the product.

See, even if they may not get a few specific minor cultural details exactly right,  the overall take on it is solidly scriptural.  But, where I got excited is that they took pains to show all the folks as real human beings; folks with back stories.  These characters come across as genuine, real, believable. 

Now, I don't have a problem with speculation on what characters said and did that was outside of  biblical canon, so long as it is consistent with what IS biblical canon.  If you've been around BLR very long, you know that I have a tendency to do such things myself (see In Which My Imagination Runs Away with Me), because, well, I think we are so used to the stories that are told in rather abbreviated, compressed, just-get-the-main-details-out narratives that we forget that the people in those stories were real, three-dimensional, breathing, hurting, human beings just trying to stay alive and do the best they could.  And I LOVED some of the little details, such as Andrew and John eavesdropping on the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus...and John had a tablet out, making notes.

So...if you haven't taken time to check it out....check it out.

It's amazing.

Blogging Bible Study: Digging in the Desert - Judges

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Ok, time for a little honesty.  There are high points in Judges, where the good guys win and righteousness prevails...but overall, it is a very depressing book.  The people forgot their God and his requirements, as Moses and Joshua had known they would, and repeatedly fell into error and then bondage. The end of the book is truly dismal...so I'm going to try and minimize the pain and look at all the desert references in one go.

It's not too hard, really, there are only 4 chapters that contain the word 'desert'... and the first, 1:16, is purely geographical.

The descendants of Moses' father-in-law, the Kenite,  went up from the City of Palms with the men of Judah to live among the people of the Desert of Judah in the Negev near Arad.

It did make me smile, though, because the tour bus drove through Arad on the way to and from the Bedoin camp that we stayed at last May.  And...I wondered...could the folks who are running that camp today be somehow related to those folks who came to live among the people of Judah? Hmm..

That's the only happy thought in the whole discussion of 'desert' in the book of Judges.

Next we have chapter 8, in which Gideon is pursuing the kings of Midian, Zebah and Zalmunna with his skeleton army of three hundred men who had attacked the camp.  Hungry and exhausted, they chased their enemies across the Jordan and asked at the village of Succoth for bread for the men to eat so they could be strengthened to continue the pursuit.  But the leaders of the city copped an attitude and basically said, 'Why should we treat you like you already won the battle?' and refused.

Gideon, who had already dealt with the bad attitude of the Ephraimites, was not happy.

The Gideon replied, "Just for that, when the LORD has given Zebah and Zalmunna into my hand, I will tear your flesh with desert thorns and briars."  (8:7). 

Further down the road,  they made the same request at Peniel and received the same answer; Gideon declared he would tear the city tower down after he had defeated his enemies (8:9)

Of course, he captured the Midianites, and, returning,  caught a young man from Succoth and learned the names of the 77 elders of the town.  When they got to town, he displayed his captives to the elders and

He took the elders of the town and taught the men of Succoth a lesson by punishing them with desert thorns and briers.  (8:16).  Then he tore down the tower of Peniel and killed all the men there, in retaliation for their refusal to help in the defeat of Israel's enemies.

The next desert references are in chapter 11; Jepthah sent messengers to the king of Ammon, correcting his mistaken view of history, and he mentions the desert  in verses 16 and 18...

'But when they came up out of Egypt, Israel went through the desert to the Red Sea and on to Kadesh...Next they traveled through the desert, skirted the lands of Edom and Moab, and camped on the other side of the Arnon.  They did not enter the territory of Moab, for the Arnon was its border.'


Jepthah goes on to describe the attack from the Amorites, led by Sihon, and their subsequent defeat, this time using 'desert' as description of conquered territory:

'Then the LORD, the God of Israel, gave Sihon and all his men into Israel's hands, and they defeated them.  Israel took over all the land of the Amorites who lived in that country, capturing all of it from the Arnon to the Jabbok and from the desert to the Jordan.'  (11:21-22).

The Ammonite king preferred his version of the story, though, which meant that he had claim to the land that Israel had captured from the Amorites, and he attacked them, resulting in his defeat and a personal tragedy for Jepthah.

The last references to the desert are in chapter 20...one of the most dismal stories in Judges.  Not going into the horrible events that led up to this; you can read that in chapter 19.  Men from one of the towns of the tribe of Benjamin had done something so vile that the other tribes were determined to punish the offenders...but the Benjamites went to war against their kinsmen rather than give up the guilty ones. After two days of battle, during which the Benjamites inflicted great losses on the rest of the Israelites,  the Israelites set an ambush and slaughtered the fighting men of Benjamin.

So they fled before the Israelites in the direction of the desert, but they could not escape the battle.  And the men of Israel who came out of the towns cut them down there....As they turned and fled toward the desert to the rock of Rimmon, the Israelites cut down five thousand men along the roads.  They kept pressing after the Benjamites as far as Gidom and struck down two thousand more...But six hundred men turned and fled into the desert to the rock of Rimmon, where they stayed four months. (20:42,45,47)

Then the Israelites turned back to the territory of the Benjamites and continued the punishment, slaughtering people and livestock and burning towns.In the end, the eleven tribes attacking Benjamin had lost an average of  about 3,600 soldiers each, while the Benjamites lost 25,000 just from their tribe.  In chapter 21, you can read of the fallout from that calamity, and how the people grieved for the tribe of Benjamin and concocted a work-around for the men who were left to Benjamin to get wives to rebuild the tribe...all in all a very sad business.

Judges uses the word 'desert' as a geographical reference, an historical reference and...an adjective, for the thorns and briars Gideon used to punish the elders of Succoth.   I think it's interesting that something that came from the desert was used to inflict punishment, while the remnant of the fighting men of Benjamin fled to the rock in the desert for safety.  There's no evidence that the tribe of Benjamin ever repented for their actions, but yet the Israelites actually made sacrifices themselves to restore them, as they grieved for the loss...that's a picture of grace, for all the punishment prior had been brutal, for both the punished and the punisher.

This has started me thinking... God was with the Israelites; he had told them to go to battle, and told them to send Judah first.  Yet the attack was still costly; something like  40,000 Israelites were killed in the three days of battle.  I kinda see a picture here...sin has a price, it costs something.  The Israelites mourned and wept even as they were going to battle...and the battle hurt them.  Yet the sin was grievous and the consequences had to follow.   Do you see...it hurts God for us to suffer the consequences of our sin.  It's kind of a stretch but the suffering of the Israelites to correct their kinsfolk is giving me a glimpse of God's grief involved in correcting his people.  So many folks seem to have the impression that God relishes punishing miscreants...but I think He allowed the Israelites to suffer such painful loss in the process to illustrate just what it actually costs to deal with folks who chose to do wrong.

But it's a cost that He pays, time and time again, and ultimately he took the full punishment himself.

Good Friday is when we commemorate the ultimate price that He paid, before we ever repented.

It's probably not a coincidence that it was the third day that the victory was won...

Just my musings.  Don't attach too much significance here because it's beyond me. But, wow...

When the Lesson Hits Home...

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

via GIPHY

IE, egg on face....

Ok, I am taking some ministry development classes at church.  It has been WONDERFUL, y'all.  I'm really, really enjoying it...Wednesday nights...up until the quarantine...were literally my favorite part of the week.

Of course, there has been homework.  One assignment for the 'Building a Team' class we just completed was to write an essay about a biblical character whose leadership style I admired.

Having just come through the desert with the Israelites in the Friday Blogging Bible Study, Moses was the obvious choice.

One of the points I made was that Moses did not want to lead the people.  He tried every which way he could to get out of that assignment...but, once he realized he wasn't allowed to say no, he put himself into it wholeheartedly.  Over and over again we read variations on 'Moses did exactly what the LORD told him to do.'  He didn't just fulfill the job, he did it to the utmost of his ability.  The job he didn't want.

Here's the summary paragraph from the essay:


What a challenge to leaders today…to release authority and not micro-manage their teams, to refuse to retaliate against insubordination but let God sort things out, to take on jobs we don’t necessarily want but are the best qualified for…to do exactly what God commands us to do, with all of our heart and skill and effort and no personal ambition. What would happen in the kingdom if we all had the passion to obey that Moses had?


Challenging, yes?

I didn't expect it to hit home so quickly.

See, back just before Christmas, we did a thing in the core class (the one that all the students are in, regardless of their chosen study track).  We  picked table leaders...folks who would be designated to lead the homework discussions each week.  Now, I had been kinda bouncing from table to table and that night I found myself sitting at a table at which I knew exactly one person.  And the selection of table leaders was done by popular vote at the table.  When the votes for our table were counted, it was 5 votes for yours truly and one vote for someone else.

Guess who cast the dissenting vote?

But, hey, being the designated discussion leader wasn't a terribly onerous thing to do...it pretty much just meant I had to be on top of my game and have my homework, um, discussion-ready  each week.

Aside from the one person I already knew, I basically just learned first names for the rest of the folks at the table. Two of them dropped out at the semester break, and then I missed the last two classes before everything shut down for the worldwide quarantine. (One, I was out of town, and the other I was doing the prep for one of those invasive screening procedures that the doctors insist upon when you pass the half-century mark and have a birthday ending in zero).  Then the classes shut down and we finished submitting our last assignments online.

With the continued shutdown, it became apparent that the final set of classes for the school year will be done online.  Well, we're getting used to the online thing, so that's ok.  I kinda thought my 'table leader' job was going to fall by the wayside and, you know, I was ok with that, lol.

Not so much.

Today I checked and the syllabus for the next class has been uploaded.  And...the table leaders are supposed to organize a zoom call (or other online meetup) weekly for their table folks so that we can continue to discuss the homework.

Y'all, that's when I realized I am a TERRIBLE table leader.  I didn't even get contact info ...heck, I didn't even get LAST NAMES... for the folks at my table.  Gulp.  I should have gotten everyone's name...checked up on them...but it was a job I didn't want, so I just did the bare bones requirements of it.

And here I'd written this lovely essay about Moses going above and beyond for HIS job-he-didn't-want.

I have been schooled.  SCHOOLED, I tell you.  And now I have to admit what a pathetically lame leader I was and eat humble pie to confess that I didn't bother getting contact info because...well, because I was just not willing to commit that much of myself to the job...and see if I can track down the full names and contact info for the folks at my table.

Because I'm going to have to be WAY more intentional about it for the next couple of months.

Time for me to suck it up and learn from the conclusions I so willingly wrote about last month.
Hopefully, the lesson will stick.

And I guess I'm about to increase my technical skills as well.  LOL.

Blogging Bible Study: Digging in the Desert - Geography and History

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Ok, with that title I will probably have about six people actually click through and read today's post, lol.  But that's the truth...at this point in the book of Joshua, the people are settling the land and all references to 'desert' either describe boundaries or look back on the time the Israelites spent in the desert between leaving Sinai and  crossing the Jordan.

15:1 lists the Desert of Zin as one of Judah's borders
15:61 lists  the cities that would be in Judah's territory that were also in the desert
18:12 lists the desert of Beth Aven as one of the boundaries of Benjamin
20:8 designates Bezer in the desert on the plateau as a sanctuary city of Reuben

24:7, the last time 'desert' is mentioned in Joshua, is a quote from Joshua's review of Israel's history; he's actually quoting God at this point

" 'But they cried out to the LORD for help, and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians; he brought the sea over them and covered them.  You saw with your own eyes what I did to the Egyptians.  Then you lived in the desert for a long time.' "

Joshua went on to describe what God had done for the people to bring them to the place where they were settling into the land, where they live in cities they didn't build and eat the fruit of trees they didn't plant (24:13).  Then he issues his famous challenge to the people to make a defining choice that day to serve the Lord, the God of Israel, and not the foreign gods of the people they had displaced.  You know...the one that ends, "But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." (v. 15).

I think this is interesting...the desert is part of their definition.  Not only does it mark boundaries, but it is part of their shared experience that forged them into a nation.  But the fact that it is, in the last bit of Joshua, history, says something crucial about the desert:

It doesn't go on forever.  Sooner or later,  the desert becomes history.  The experience is crucial to character formation, but it does end.

Just a little nugget to ponder in this season.

Hodge Podging again...

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

This may be a regular Wednesday thing...so long as I have time.  The  next round of Rock College classes kick into online streaming next week, so we'll see how the free time goes.  But, meantime, here's Episode 2 of the current Hodgepodge season.  Click the image below to travel to 'From this side of the pond' to see all the responses....

1. Has spring sprung in your part of the world? How can you tell? Did March come in like a lion where you live? Going out like a lamb or something more ferocious?
Spring usually arrives mid-March in North Alabama, and this year is no different.   Hoping for no serious cold snaps now to damage the  blossoms...or this year's peach crop.  Love me some fresh peaches...  We've had a bit of rough weather around here but it dodged our house; so it hasn't been a terribly lion-ish exit.  At least, not meteorologically...

2. The last thing that caused you to spring to your feet?
I honestly can't think of something that made me jump up and run.  Probably it was the teakettle whistling that made me hasten to pour it over the teabag and quiet the screech; there are folks in the household who just don't tolerate that noise very well.

3. Do you have a spring clean to-do list? What's one chore on the list you've already managed to accomplish? What spring clean chore do you most dread?
*Hangs head*  Ok. Full transparency.  I am a terrible housekeeper.  I'm still working on the spring cleaning from 2010.  I will get caught up...some day...

4. Tell us something you've learned about yourself or the wider world as a result of social distancing/the virus crisis.
In 2011, we had terrible tornadoes that destroyed hundreds of homes in our area.  About 30 people in our county died; I think it was over 200 in the state.  But all I had out of it was a week off of work, with no electricity, so working was not even a possibility.  My kids piled in a car and drove to visit their out of state grandparents. My Sweet Babboo and I had the whole week to ourselves; the car with gas in it was stuck inside the garage; the one we could drive had very little gas and, as there was no power, there was none to be had.  So we really couldn't even join the cleanup efforts.  I was on the tail end of a bout of mononucleosis, and the rest I had that week was enough to finally kick it to the curb; I felt normal again when life got back to normal.  And I felt...guilty.  Kind of ashamed, actually, that we had such a nice break while everyone else worked so hard to clean up, and so many lost family members.  I almost have the same sensation now.  My hubby and I have jobs that let us work from home without loss of income;  I am not looking for things to do (the spring cleaning that I thought I could catch up on isn't happening...yet...).  We don't have to go out often.  But so many are working so hard, and going through such extreme measures to try and be safe and keep their families safe.  I don't feel like I'm doing my part.  But,  my hubby does have a compromised immune system so ...I have to stay home.  And I have to learn to be ok with that.  I can sew some masks...so, yeah, that's what I'm doing, here and there.  Sewing masks.  It's not much of a help, but it's...something.

5. Something you love that's the color pink?
Strawberry ice cream!

6. Insert your own random thought here.
Easter is in 11 days.  Hard to believe; the year is so odd.  But what a good thing to celebrate in the midst of the crisis...hope and resurrection.