Wisdom Truck 26

 

Well, unless my count is off, we have reached the halfway pint of the year, and are pulling into Psalm 51.  This is the famous Psalm David wrote after Nathan did his "You are the man!" speech, convicting David over Bathsheba and her husband.  And it contains two of the famous verses in all of Psalms.  One of them is the verse that tells us that wasn't only those sins, but ORIGINAL sin...

Psa 51:5  Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. 

This verse explains that as a descendant of Adam, we are born helpless prisoners of sin.  Two verses later, David explains the solution:

Psa 51:7  Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 

This doesn't seem too difficult to get to us; but it was very hard for his original readers.  And that is why, in a strange place to OUR eyes, our target verse lies right between the two:

Psa 51:6  Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. 

We NEED to get this to get from verse 5 to verse 7.  Because David- and we- need God's wisdom to go from 'born in sin' to 'clean'.   And why this would have been hard for them to get is the words, "purge me with hyssop".

You see, hyssop was like their version of a whisk broom, or a paintbrush.  It was what was used to paint the doorposts and lintels at passover with BLOOD.  So a Hebrew of the time might have been thinking, "How am I going to get white by being painted with blood?"  We know the answer to that- and so did David.  

Back in Psalm 22, David had had a vision of the crucifixion of Christ, down to details he could not have known unless he'd seen the act- and he had the why of it explained as well.  He knew that the taint of sin can only be removed by the blood of Jesus- though the crucifixion was several centuries away.  And that took the wisdom that God gave him in his secret heart.  Where man's wisdom would have left a 10th century BC Hebrew wondering how a washing with blood would clean him- remember, they knew that animal sacrifice only COVERED sin, it didn't remove it.  God's wisdom showed him the very plan of salvation.

I have another example of man's wisdom- from myself.  In studying this passage, my paper Bible decided first step in understanding this whole thing was to explain sin.  And one thing said in that explanation was, "A common metaphor is to say that sin means, 'to miss the mark.' This is not a good explanation, because missing the mark implies it hit something else."

I puzzled over this most of the week.  The author didn't explain what it was that DID get hit.  I told myself, "The answer must be important, or I'd have never noticed it!"  So I used "my wisdom" on it, conjuring scenarios of Jesus holding a bullseye, and everytime I missed the mark it hit Him, or a loved one or something like that.  It just wasn't making sense.  So today as I type, I went to God, asking for the wisdom I needed, and thanking Him, because I knew darn well, He would open it up to me before I sat down at the keyboard.

Then I looked again.  And I said to myself, "This isn't right, because you can miss the target with an arrow, and it might not hit anything.  And besides, what is it I'm shooting, anyway?"  And then, with a little nudge, I realized:

"You know, he did say it was a BAD example."  Of course I couldn't make it make sense!  So with my 'man's wisdom' I'd been trying to find the good lesson from the bad example.  Silk purses from sow's ears.

And I owe you some pictures...

 So let's start on Independence Day, where we find Chris and Misty discontented over doing nothing, so...

Off we went on a day muggy from 2 nights of early AM rain...

..and we were far from the only ones

Two little white specks are those darn butterflies again

One of the bikers lost his late-ride nutrients...

Ah, there are the little buggers

And again, this time together

Misty was more than ready for the river

We did have a couple of fishers, but they gave up

"Darn, I lost my energy packet! Guess I'll eat my tuna packet instead..."

More river

Dead center is a rather ragged 4-leaf clover

Misty seeks swamp varmints

First evidence of the firecracker brigade from last night

Here's a first: Not only the socks, but insloes too

And a tiny kitty at the Plex that Misty was desperate to meet

Later we went out and did some stuff, including a new floor rug

So hot, even Squirrel pretended she was at the beach

I bought two six packs on Wednesday- the last one ended Saturday night

On to Sunday- a quick one after Church

Ye gods, t'was muggy

Honestly, fireworks people, how hard IS it to pick up after yourselves?

Misty and a friend

More rain gave Misty plenty of chances to drink despite eschewing the river for shade

And last but not least- Laurie's side, finished

Pictures

 Most of this post will be from Wednesday morning- when it was barely fit to go out.  We topped out at 95F here that day, 94.5 Thursday, and it is 94.8 as I type Friday, with a 'feels like' of 105F.  I'll let you know if we go higher, as it is only 230 PM.  Anyway, on to those pics:

We start out at 7 AM, and it is mind-numbingly humid, as the fog on my lens shows here...

Okay, that's a little better

The giant mushrooms at our neighbors are 'loving it'

This one was supposed to show the butterfly that Misty kept nosing up...

Oh, there it is

Now for some varmintage

We weren't the only ones who thought, "Surely it will be cooler early" in error

The trail was actually busy

Ah, a little breakfast

A couple of bunnies

It was actually nice here- a cool breeze came off the river

Even Misty was happy staying longer than usual

The Alumni yard was covered with soap suds from an earlier washing of goose poop off the trail

I just took this to read the side of the van, lol

Yet more suds

One neighbor decked out for Saturday

This is that savage chihuahua that we cross the street to avoid

Our next-doors have bracket fungi

And we have slime mold

We made a further attempt yesterday, to much less pleasant results...

Just as muggy, and hotter

Squirrel at the pool

The river was no comfort

Later that night, I took my Beer Advocate pic of the night, posting it with...

"Grok says Robert The Bruce is for cooler weather, but the world could end before winter; so..."

Later KC surprised me with a "stovepipe" of Dirty Bastard, which he'd never seen in a can before...

So, as I was reading the posts on BA, a friend had engaged another poster over glasses, and drinking the proper beer from the proper glass.  I asked, "Does that mean for my Scottish ales, I should put a kilt on my Grand Cru glass?" Another poster informed me I needed a "thistle" glass for Wee Heavies...

I mentioned I would need to inform Santa about this.  He said he had went through a Wee Heavy stage years back, and still had this glass on his amazon wish list!  While my RTB was a fine beer, the DB was maltier and a far better taste.  

Oh, and we have set the new week's record here at Bobs Bar- 95.7.