dar334

It’s early afternoon on a quiet Friday at work; B1 left early and will not be back.  B2 had to take a trailer to one of our techs not far away and then is having lunch; he will return to the office.  R & L carriers brought a load of overfill drop tubes, manholes, and manhole covers; fortunately the trailer was equipped with a lift gate and was carrying a pallet jack, I was here alone.  Nice young man, covered in tattoos, was the driver.   Had he not been dressed normal, except for the backwards baseball hat and driving the R & L semi, I may have been afraid of him.   Forgive me, but I can visualize him with saggy bottom pants being handcuffed on an episode of America’s Most Wanted.  Yes, I profile.  I was mostly confident that R & L does background checks on their drivers, and if they don’t I’d rather you didn’t tell me.

I opened my personal email and found Today’s Bible Reading courtesy of Bible Gateway.  As always, something will pop right out at me and get my pondering juices flowing.   Psalm 83 was one of today’s readings and verse 8 was the popping out at me verse.  “Even Assyria has joined them to reinforce Lot’s descendants.”

I don’t think you have to be a Bible thumper or even attend church to have heard about Sodom and Gomorrah.  You may not know the whole story of these particular two cities, but I’m sure the profiler in you will get a negative feeling when you hear their names.  Sodom and Gomorrah’s inhabitants were terribly wicked and the Lord decided to come down with a couple of his angels to see just how wicked they were; and if he they found they were, in fact, terribly wicked, He would destroy the cities and the inhabitants completely.

When the two angels reached the gate of Sodom they found Lot.  Lot was a nephew of Abraham, the father of all the nations.  Abraham left his home in Ur to go to the promised land, per instructions from God, and took Lot with him.  When their descendants and their flocks got too large for one area, they parted company.  Lot went to Sodom.  Abraham knew Lot was there and didn’t want the Lord to kill him so he pleaded with God to spare the righteous if he found any.   Long story short, Lot and his wife and two daughters were found righteous by God, so before sending down the burning sulfer they were told to leave the city quickly and not look back.  Lot and his family escaped, but while they were running to Zoar his wife looked back and was turned in to a pillar of salt.

Lot took his two daughters and settled in a cave in the mountains.  The daughters realized there were no men around to give them children so they got their father drunk two nights in a row and took turns sleeping with him.  They both conceived and gave birth to sons, Moab and Ben-Ammi.  Moab is the father of the Moabites and Ben-Ammi is the father of the Ammonites.  Both ‘tribes’ ended up being enemies of the Israelites, God’s chosen people.

Now back to Psalm 83.  Per the theme in my study Bible, this psalm was a prayer for God to do whatever it takes to convince the world that he is indeed God.  The writer is asking God to destroy the Israelites enemies and prove that He is Most High over all the earth.

Now my pondering leads me to realize that no matter what He did, people still denied obeying Him.  He then sent his son and throughout the New Testament, several tried to convince the world that Jesus was real, Jesus was God, Jesus was Lord.  And here we are today.  Not obeying His laws, living the way WE want, even going as far as changing HIS laws to conform with what WE want.  I’m just as guilty as everybody else.  And we wonder why we are experiencing so much tragedy.  Storms, earthquakes, disease, illness.  Same shit, different day.

Always pondering,

dar