"Enigmas.............................."

We are now sixteen days into this “Through the Bible in 120 Days” that our Wednesday evening class has adopted. This week revival services canceled the second meeting and my small group will be with the men at the rescue mission next time around, but I’m already eight days ahead according to the schedule given us. Admittedly, all those genealogies have been skimmed. As far as that goes, that long list of what “thou shall and shall not do”, all the details on building a tabernacle, all those instructions on what to sacrifice and who to stone, somehow it didn’t seem necessary to consume it word for word. We were told to read, not to study. Discussion and the Holy Ghost, Himself, would provide the “manna” when we came together. My manner of consumption, therefore, has likewise been to follow that “inner tug”, slowing down to catch the “meat”, collecting thoughts and questions as they come to me, putting them on paper for future digestion whether with others in this particular literary journey or, as now, with whomsoever drops by this isolated dot on the Internet. Indeed, that which is on my mind this morning, more than halfway through the Book of Numbers, is the striking difference between the God one finds in the Old Testament and that one who is presented us in the New Testament through Jesus Christ. It’s not a discovery just made. I’ve taught this sacred volume from cover to cover at least three or four times. That doesn’t mean, however, that this old man has conquered Scripture in all that it brings to us. My brain is still puzzled as to an omniscient Creator who knows beforehand His own work of grace yet to be set in place, but initiates the whole scenario by ordering the slaughter of entire nations, men, women, and children, indeed, some of it in the form of judgments and plagues upon the Jews, themselves. What brings me peace in the matter is that fact of it being a mystery, that plus the tangible knowledge of His character and compassion which meets and assures me here as I go…….