Musings From A Rolling Eyed Turtle

                                                                   The Whole Town *   The hope was to change the world!   And the leader that was expected to accomplish that seemed to be coming into his own.   And now it was starting to look like it all could hit the big time. A whole town was coming out to meet the leader and maybe the opportunity to share the message of change could be multiplied. But (there always seems to be a “but”), the outcome ended up being shaped by what had happened earlier. What happened earlier was mostly centered around a not so ordinary man.  In fact, this man scared the daylights out of people.  At night, he roamed naked among the tombs, screaming and yelling at the top of his lungs.  He frequently cut himself so that his ...

Be amazed… Jesus welcomed sinners …The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, “This man welcomes sinners… (Luke 15:2) Jesus hung out with sinners …And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” (Luke 19:7) Jesus ate with sinners …And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Matt 9:11) Jesus was a friend of sinners …The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ (Matt 11:19) With Jesus being so welcoming, what did people do? People came to see Him …They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” (John 12:21) People came to hear Him …Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. (Luke 15:1) People followed Him …While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many ta...

The words rhyme!  They are also a treasure trove of meanings.  To top it off, some of the words even have the same spelling and very different definitions! Let’s start with the word “depravity”.  It is “th e state of being morally bad, the q uality or state of being corrupt, evil, or perverted.” Consider the rhyming word “gravity”.   It is “a serious situation or problem; the gravitational attraction of the mass of the earth, the moon, or a planet for bodies at or near its surface.” Now throw in a variation of the word “gravity” as in “grave”.  It is “an excavation for burial of a body; likely to produce great harm or danger; significantly serious.” Depravity is grave, as in serious and it great harm can be a result of it.  Depravity can even work a lot like gravity, that is, if left unchecked, it pulls us further into grave situations. Furthermore, when our time has come and we enter the grave due to a physical death, depravity could also be the d...

It’s not too hard to imagine the disappointment! There had been the account of a powerful God who could totally burn up a sacrifice, even one that had been drenched in water. And the priest, this guy Elijah, had simply called on God and God did it, big time! But instead of another big and impressive illustration of the power of God, Naaman was told to just go and bathe in the river Jordan. Naaman was actually more than disappointed that the prophet in this situation didn’t dramatically wave his hands to heal him. Go and bathe in the muddy Jordan, yeah right! There were better rivers back home. Not only didn’t he go bathe in the river, he went home in a rage! In my last post, I wrote about that dramatic demonstration of God’s power as shown by burning up the sacrifice and the altar but I also cautioned us that such does not happen as regularly as people might want. In fact, I don’t think it has happened in the same way since! But what normally does happen is this: God speaks, God hears ...

Talk about feeling insignificant, unimportant and totally ignored! · There was no voice; · No one answered; · No one paid attention. If any should have received a voice response and an answer and been paid attention to, they were it! They were, all 450 of them, prophets of a “god” named Baal. In fact, they had been so intent on getting a response, that they called on their “god” all day and danced frantically around the altar. And when they received no response, they doubled down on their efforts by cutting themselves so that their blood flowed as a sign of their sincerity and devotion. Yet still, there was no voice, no one answered and no one paid attention. Enter Elijah, the prophet of God. He was just one against 450! He had given the prophets of Baal the first shot at having their “god” consume, by fire, a bull offering to demonstrate who the real God was. For the prophets of Baal, their efforts went nowhere! So it was Elijah’s turn to call on his God. But, to make it even more obv...

“Don’t wanna go!”  You hear that from kids.  If they don’t want to go somewhere, they can make that abundantly clear. Adults often share that feeling but they might couch their reluctance in a more diplomatic term such as:   “I would prefer not to”.   Sometimes they even choose to hide how they really feel by using phrases like:   “I’m too busy” or “I already have a commitment”. Moses was not a kid but an adult.   He didn’t wanna go and he didn’t even try to hide his reluctance!   In fact, he clearly expressed it in very direct terms:   Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here .   (Ex 33:15) Ok, to be fair, it wasn’t an issue of Moses not wanting to go; he just didn’t want to go if God’s presence wasn’t going with him.   Moses was astute enough to know that if the Lord’s presence was not with him (and with the people of Israel ), things could go sideways very quickly.   One c...

Conquer the water!  It was a campaign at the swimming pool.  I’m guessing that it was an attempt to get people, who are afraid of water, to learn to swim.  But the issue is really not about conquering the water; it’s about conquering our fear of the water. Yet the campaign has a certain appeal to it.  If you are afraid of water, it’s probably easier to focus on conquering something you can see and touch (the water) as opposed to conquering something you can’t see and touch (your fear). And conquering something does resonate with many.  The familiar usage of the word “conquer” is gain or acquire by force of arms.  Another aspect of conquering is to gain mastery over by overcoming obstacles or opposition.  It can also mean to overcome by mental or moral power.  Given that conquering something has an attractive element to it, there’s a verse in Romans that seems to be the key to conquering anything and everything: “ No, in all these things we...