Wisdom Truck 28

 

This week, we land in Psalm 90- the Psalm of "Moses, the Man of God".  Ironic for me, because in my morning reading, I have just passed Numbers 33- the point at which, it seems to me, that another- possibly Joshua- took up the writing.  And a lot of cross references take me back to what I had just read in Numbers, and will be reading in Deuteronomy.

I believe this prayer might fit into the Deuteronomy 31-32 space, because the whole first part of the Psalm talks about the power and wrath of God against a sinful people, and reaches a crescendo just before our verse:

Psa 90:9  Yes, throughout all our days we experience your raging fury; the years of our lives pass quickly, like a sigh. 

Psa 90:10  The days of our lives add up to seventy years, or eighty, if one is especially strong. But even one’s best years are marred by trouble and oppression. Yes, they pass quickly and we fly away. 

Psa 90:11  Who can really fathom the intensity of your anger? Your raging fury causes people to fear you. 

And so it is in Deuteronomy 32:

Deu 32:28  They are a nation devoid of wisdom, and there is no understanding among them. 

Deu 32:29  I wish that they were wise and could understand this, and that they could comprehend what will happen to them.” 

But a prayer is more than a listing of my faults that need atonement for- there needs to be a supplication:

Psa 90:12  So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. 

Now there are two ways I want to draw from this, our target verse.  First was started in the silly thought, "Well, Moses, you had 43,800 of those days to number..."  But leaving math behind, I searched for the meaning.  Most agreed with Keil and Delitzsch:

 ...but “to number our days” is in itself equivalent to “hourly to contemplate the fleeting character and brevity of our lifetime;”

Put another way, "Treat every day as if it was your last."

I think that's wrong.

It forgets the last part of the verse- 'that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.'  Indicating there is something yet to search for.  I see it as better put, hourly treat the day as your FIRST, seeking the wisdom to move you on.   Life is gaining wisdom and living it out; at the end, you look back and see how much you've shared, but if you are still breathing, you need to be moving ahead, not behind! WH Murray put it this way:

The way, therefore, to number our days is not to so number them that they seem to include the result of our lives, but to so number them that they seem to include simply the beginning of our lives. They and all they bring are only stepping-stones which lead us up to the threshold of a nobler life, nobler in its opportunities, occasions, and the character of its joy.

The second part, and why I switched to the KJV for the target verse, is the word 'apply'.  It struck me when you check the definition in Strongs Concordance, the first of several applications he lists is 'abide'- a word being hit on again and again in our church's current series on 1 John.  So I switched to occurances, and it only is translated as "abide" one time:

Num 31:23  Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water. 

Back to Numbers!  The story here is that the Israelite Army was suppsed to slay everything that lived of Midian- but instead, they took booty of female prisoners and treasure.  Here, God is speaking about the treasures- they had to be purified.  To be pure, they had to ABIDE- survive through- the fire (if that was their type of treasure- the previous verse lists off "the gold, and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead").  And even if the fire was not its fate it still had to go through the "water of seperation"- the SAME water with the hyssop, etc, and the ashes of the red heifer, that we saw last week!

This then, is the Christian life- to seek God's wisdom that we might abide the period of testing, and be purified in the Living Water.  And we do this abiding hourly, as if we're at the beginning of our journey.  Which given those 43,800 days up against eternity, we really are.

The boat rant

 I was really going to rant about my job today. I described Thursday as "the most 'what the hell just happened?' day in the history of such days." Our company has significantly less corporate support than we need- Our 'front office' is down to my boss and the production manager/chief cook and bottle washer, and two engineers.  Upper management, HR, and scheduling all handled from our 'main plant' in Missouri (Main plant by default- they sit across the street from Tracker Boat's main plant).  Scheduling especially has become a problem- I hate to pick on the basically one-woman operation (a lady that will probably still be working at age 100), but since returning from a recent vacation, her not-really-trying for us has reached new levels of not-really-trying, at least from our perspective.  I pray for her- you can't really blame Custer when he's down to two one-legged soldiers and a cook hiding under his horse- but what we have cut in the last week that we didn't actually need is a number that usually takes 6 months to hit.  Add to that a system of sewing, packing, and shipping that makes me wonder how we manage to get things right in the best of circumstances- and it ain't working right right now.  Personnel changes keep hurting us; but so does a system in which a) one cover can't be found around 1-2 this afternoon; b) at 330 I'm asked to re-cut it; c) when the sewing lead gets the cover from me, she recognizes it as one she had to ask the pack-out people how the straps went, so she knew it was out there; d) finds that it HAD been sewn, HAD been packed, and HAD been shipped- but someone failed to mark it off; and e) returns it to me right at quitting time "so you can use it next time", never mind it is an older model that may never be ordered again...

And rising above them all is an older equipment array that is constantly in need of repair- and my boss can't get them fixed because "OMG we can't spend anything", plus the fact that our only maintenence outside himself is a retired guy who looks like the Skipper and comes in once or twice a week for a few hours (just for the sewing machines).  Right now we have 4 cutting machines.  #1 has a pen holder that cost a grand and is about to fall off; #2, my machine, badly needs a new belt and just today (Thursday) started sticking on the far side; #3, also in bad need of a belt, has developed such a slip in said belt we can't trust it; and #4 is a multi-ply machine we got when they closed the Wisconsin plant that has so far defied every effort to figure out how it works. 

Given all this, I decided, before I rant and point fingers, let's take a look at the financials.  Our company is owned by a large conglomerate who stretches across the marine, RV, and related industries.  In February, when we had bupkiss for orders and the Q1 report was still to come out, it was trading in the $140-150 range. Since then, and with a dismal Q1 report, it has been sliding steadily- In April, it was down to a bump over $100 a share when word slipped that they were looking into a merger with our biggest competitor.  Why?  Because both were heavily in the RV industry, and the RV industry- led by trailerable units- were sucking like a lamprey on a shark's butt.  They like to judge these things by comparing this years sales to sales last year at the same time (Year over Year, or YOY).  February through May's YOY were -24%, -22%, -17%, and -19%.  Marine (AKA my part of the business) was much better, but with marine being only 15-17% of our total, it was a drop in the ocean.

Stock prices continued to meander, along with the talks- until early May, when the talks broke down and our stock cratered at around $85 (and thank you Jesus they don't give us stock options!).  But things continued to be desperate, and the talks soon resumed.  However, any excitement had died off, and the official annoucement that the merger was going through only gave the stock a bump to around $89, where it has remained.

After peppering grok with questions, the final assessment for my job is- once the merger is cleared in late 2027, synergy teams will come in to look things over, and with our positioning, medium-term it could be very promising.  Short term (in the meantime), bend over and smile, it will only get worse. Until or unless we find a way to mitigate the anchor that is the RV industry tied around our collective necks, we'll be blowing a lot of bubbles.

And you wonder why I can't move "weekend beer" off of "neccessary expanses..."

Wisdom Truck 27

 

Before we get into this week's reference, a bit of a mea culpa.  In Numbers 19 there are two other uses for hyssop other than with blood- and I think it's going to pay to look at them.

In Numbers 19 is the sacrifice of the 'red heifer' a subject that some of you that follow emerging prophesy might know of.  The red heifer without blemish was to be a special sacrifice that involved a lot of "you shall be unclean, and then you shall be clean" things that, quite frankly, I haven't dwelt on long enough to fully understand.  But the day after I typed last week's message, I hit this passage in my morning reading.  Hang with me here, and we might actually get to this week's verse!

So the red heifer was burned COMPLETE in a place outside the camp, in a fire to which was added cedarwood, scarlet thread and HYSSOP.  There are a ton of interpretations why these things were added; as good a synthesis as any is that cedar, which resists decay, represents Christ, whose body would not suffer decay; the hyssop represented the tool of our purification, perhaps faith; and scarlet for the blood of Christ that washes us clean.  Of course back then, they wouldn't have known this- but what they did know was that these same three items were required in the sacrifice to be cleansed of their great scourge, leprosy (Leviticus 14, if you're curious).  Leprosy represented in the body what sin did to the soul.

Sin leads to death; and thus what happened next was that someone would then gather the ashes in holy vessels, and they would be saved for when neccessity required someone to handle a dead body.  At which point, some of the ashes would be put into a vessel with running ("living") water; the hyssop would then be used to sprinkle the person to purify them.  Hyssop, I believe, is symbolic of faith, in God and in Christ's sacrifice.

Moeover, when I read that passage that next day, I found that I had used "Man's wisdom" yet again in not waiting one more day; and I remembered something I'd hit in the morning a couple weeks before, in Numbers 9:

Num 9:22  Whether it was two days, or a month, or a year, that the cloud stayed upon the tabernacle, remaining on it, the sons of Israel stayed in their tents and did not journey. But when it was taken up, they pulled up stakes. 

"Two days, a month, or a year..." That word, year, is an undetermined time which, according to 'man's wisdom' can mean anything from 'a few days', to '18, or even 19, years'.  And here I was, worried about a post I usually do Friday or Saturday, being done on Monday, and not knowing if I would get to it waiting till Tuesday... but I guess my 'cloud' had not went up yet!

So that brings us to this week and Psalm 64:9- which can be translated thus:

Psa 64:9  And all men shall fear, and shall declare the work of God; for they shall in wisdom think of His doing. 

But this is a place with a lot of different interpretations for what the KJV renders wisdom; and I thought it might be helpful to look at the way it is rendered elsewhere:

- ...And shall wisely consider...

- ...and understood...

- ... so they will ponder...

- ...and reflect on...

All are correct; and all are the same.  God's Wisdom takes time.  Whether it be a day, a month, or 19 years.  And all should lead to 2 things: Fear of the Lord (as in reverent respect and awe), and our desire to share it with others.

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.