Today's Readings and Stuff -- Wednesday, 31 October 2018

Well, the end of the month.  November is tomorrow.  But today is the 31st, meaning today will be full of the Hallowe'en stuff.  I'm not a big fan, knowing all too well some of the bad behavior that is always going on behind the scenes and under the cover of the candy binges.  I know more than a few people who have for more than 40 years been involved in the occult stuff, one of them being a sister-in-law who is "into" all the Wicca stuff.  This is one of the two biggest events of the year (there are several), the other being six months hence beginning on the sundown of April 30.
I like candy too.  Who doesn't?  And there is something to be said for trying to dilute the pagan context into something else.  But something about it all troubles me.


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Today concludes the Lamentations.  This is a sad, tragic work.  It is not made easier when it is understood that all of this catastrophe was deserved, warned of,  and for quite a long time too.  It is still hard to imagine, for most of us anyway, the extent of the disaster.  Ever seen everything that was once considered normal and proper, gone?  They did.  Ever see people so terribly hungry that they would kill, cook, and eat their own children?  It happened, and more than once.  Ever seen babies dashed against rocks to kill them?  Happened.  Ever imagine your wives and sisters raped before your eyes, or your young daughters hauled off screaming to become sex slaves?  That too, and that is happening this very day in fact, at the hands of the demon-besotted Moslem heathens.  Including in places like England, Germany,  France, Greece, Italy, and Michigan.  Judgment.  It's a subject that makes us uncomfortable.  It should.  Does it make us uncomfortable enough to change our ways?  That does not seem to be the case.

The book has traditionally been ascribed to Jeremiah, although that is not certain.  The entire book is recited every year on the occasion of the fast day of  Tisha B'Av, which will next be commemorated beginning at sunset on August 10, 2019.

Lamentations 5

1Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.

2Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

3We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.

4We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.

5Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.

6We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

7Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.

8Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.

9We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.

10Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.

11They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah.

12Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured.

13They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.

14The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their musick.

15The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.

16The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!

17For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.

18Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.

19Thou, O Lord, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.

20Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?

21Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.

22But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.

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Song of Solomon, Chapter 4

1Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead.

2Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them.

3Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks.

4Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.

5Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.

6Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.

7Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.

8Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Senir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards.

9Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.

10How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!

11Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.

12A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

13Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard,

14Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:

15A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.

16Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.

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And now the book of James.  This has been a contentious work in Christianity for quite a long time.  I saw a discussion just the other day, roundly denouncing it as a bit of "works righteousness".  Martin Luther regarded it as "a right strawy book", and generally ignored it.
It has some meaning for me.  When I had first surrendered to the Lord, I was in a difficult life situation.  My long-time job had ended with the corporation's major restructure that took the local operation from around 13,000 employees and status as a major division of a major manufacturer, to around 350 today and just recently restructured yet again under a new name.  We had been married only about two years, I had a wife, baby daughter, and 5-year-old step-daughter to provide for.  I was just a few classes short of a degree.  Times were tough.  I found a job nearly an hour's distance, so I had lots of "windshield time" with the Lord, and with the car radio.  I found myself listening every morning to a program on a Christian station that was a teaching program.  And, for a period of several months, the text was chapter 4 in  the book of James.  So this has some reall strong personal meaning for me.
A good bit of what is involved in James, and much of the New Testament, gets us into the questions that new believers, and older ones too, involving the "how should I live now?" matters.  If we are following Christ, shouldn't it show?  Shouldn't we be different, and shouldn't that be evidenced in our language, our conduct, our general attitudes?  Sadly, all too often, it's not happening.

James 1

1James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

2My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;

3Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

4But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

5If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

6But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

7For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.

8A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

9Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted:

10But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.

11For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.

12Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.

13Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:

14But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

15Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

16Do not err, my beloved brethren.

17Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

18Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

19Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:

20For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

21Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

22But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

23For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

24For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

25But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

26If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.

27Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.