Showing posts with label Jealousy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jealousy. Show all posts

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Pr. 27: Nothing for Granted

Proverbs 27:1 "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth."

We can make all these plans, but who knows anything about tomorrow? So why brag about what you are planning, and how great things are going to be? That's different than having hope for the future. Hope is rarely specific.

It's annoying when people brag about themselves.

Verse 3 seems to elevate jealousy above anger and fury on the scale of stuff that's hard to withstand. Why is that? What makes jealousy so severe? Because anger and fury are born out of jealousy? Or is it vice-versa?

When someone has wronged you, don't they seem to fall all over themselves to "multiply kisses," to appear congenial to you? I mean, sometimes.

It is interesting the disparity in how appetizing the best food is when the belly is full and when it is empty. Too much of a good thing.

A loud blessing of your neighbor in the morning is taken as a curse? When you hear yelling outside in the morning, don't you want to curse? You assume someone is getting reamed out. And then you make assumptions that person did something to warrant that berating.

That quarrelsome wife being a constant dripping? Dripping is annoying man, and it just brings you down, because you're wasting water. What is that quarrelsome wife wasting?

Iron sharpening iron. I guess I get it. Is iron so special that it is the only element capable of such things?

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Nu. 12: Miriam Blows It

Moses married a new girl, a Cushite. Probably not the best idea, since she wasn't an Israelite. Aaron and Miriam did not like her, whether it was because of her race, or some other reason. They began to gossip about Moses. They complained to each other that God had spoken through them, too, and God heard this. Maybe this was the reason for God's rage back in chapter 11, the Israelites complained about God without bringing their problems to God. Anyway, just as He heard the Israelites, God heard Moses' brother and sister talking junk.

He summoned all three of them to the Tent of Meeting. He revealed the specialness with which He spoke to Moses, in clear instructions (for example, the law and the tabernacle...there was no margin for error or miscalculation) rather than metaphor and riddles. God also cited Moses' faithfulness. I also find it amazing in verse 8 where God says the Moses "sees the form of the LORD." How easy would it be to jump whenever the LORD says so, if you could see the very "form" of Him? What an awesome experience it must have been for Moses.

Miriam wound up having a skin disease, and had to follow the rules for purification, she had to be confined outside the camp just like anyone else. I suspect the punishment God handed down could have been much worse, she could have had a permanent condition, but Aaron begged God not to hold her sin against her. Which makes me wonder why Aaron didn't receive any punishment, other than being the object of God's wrath.

Why would Aaron and Miriam speak this way against their brother unless they were in some way jealous of how God used him in comparison to how God used Moses? His Cushite wife was hardly the issue in my opinion, rather an opening for her jealousy to be expressed. Why then would I want to be jealous of someone else's "position" in regards to God?