“40 Days and 40 Nights of God’s Word”

DAY 9: JULY 31

JOSHUA 22 – JUDGES 21:25

Remember when you were in junior high school, and the teacher got called out of the class, and she went out to the hallway to talk to someone and closed the door behind her, leaving the class to its own devices? Remember what the class got up to when the teacher was out of viewing and hearing range? At first it was quiet, with just a few whispers and giggles, and then someone would make a wisecrack, and then someone else would start talking in a normal tone to someone else, and then more people would start talking to other people in a normal tone, and some would get up from their desks and wander across the room to talk to a friend, and then someone would throw a paper airplane, and then someone else would throw another one back until a paper airplane war broke out and there were things flying through the air, back and forth, not just paper airplanes any more, and then someone would go up the chalk board and start drawing pictures on it, usually a caricature of the teacher, and then someone else would start drawing “body parts” (lol)… and in the meantime the talking back and forth had turned into shouts and roars of laughter and a desk gets pushed out of place and a few guys at the back start shooting spitballs at each other and someone gets hit in the eye and starts crying and the friends of the girl who got hit in the eye start yelling at the spitball guys who yell back and before you know it more desks are being pushed around and knocked over and THE SPITBALL GUYS ARE STANDING UP AND YELLING AND THE GIRLS ARE STANDING UP AND YELLING BACK AT THEM AND NEARLY EVERYONE ELSE IS STANDING UP OR SITTING ON TOP OF THEIR DESKS SHOUTING “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!” AND BANGING THEIR FISTS ON THEIR DESKS –

And then the teacher walks back in.

That’s kinda like today’s reading, only there’s no teacher walking back into the room. Moses and Joshua are long gone. There’s just “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!” and more of the same, with the children of Israel fighting against the heathens and against the other children of Israel, and all of them fighting against God.

What a mess!

They were warned by Moses and Joshua what would happen to them if they didn’t love God with all their heart and all their soul. They were warned what would happen to them if they intermarried with the heathen and started worshiping heathen gods. They were warned that the result would be chaos and confusion, with paper airplanes flying every which way, dirty pictures scrawled on the chalkboard, and spitballs taking out an eye (or in Samson’s case, both eyes).

Maybe it’s easy for us to sit back and judge the disastrous goings on in the aptly-named book of Judges, but WHAT THEY HECK WERE THEY THINKING???

My only comment is that this is what happens when there is no strong leader: The sheep go astray. As scripture says, there was no king in Israel in those days, so everyone just did what was right in their own eyes.

Poor God!

Even so, we’re not much better today. Can’t really talk about the specks in the eyes of the historical children of Israel when we’ve got beams sticking out of our own. Mainstream formerly Christian society is not much better than the society we read about today. In fact, mainstream formerly Christian society is probably pretty much on par with the society we read about today. The only real difference is that we’re sugar-coated with high tech and good hygiene.

________________________________________

I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s reading. I skipped ahead to see what it was, and I spied David in the pages.

YIPPEE AND THANK GOD!

See ya tomorrow!  😀

________________________________________

The PDF schedule of the BIBLE READ-THROUGH is directly below: