April 7th: Numbers 24-25, Proverbs 17 and Ephesians 5-6

Thanks for bearing with me as I traveled over the last month. Y'know, when I started this blog, the goal was to read write about the passage everyday. And although this Israel/Egypt trip was on my radar, I had no idea how hard it would be to complete the task. Jesus talks about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Now I see how hard it would be for a frequent flier to enter the kingdom of I read through the Bible in a year.

None the less, I'm back in this great Corn State that (I tongue in cheek) love. And before I comment on today's passages, business as usual, I want to talk about something I learned over in Israel.

There is a place we visited called The Temple Institute. Their goal is to create all the necessary elements needed for the third temple. So that when it is built, the Jews can resume sacrifice and again have a face to face relationship with God.

Outside of my fascination with seeing legitimate replicas of some of the items, I was struck by one particular item...the tables for the showbread. Remember, God commands the Levites to allways have these loaves of bread inside the temple.

There are twelve loaves that remain for the week. After they are replaced, they are eaten. Week old bread. No preservatives. Eww. But every week, there was a miricle. The bread was fine. Delicious. And not just that, Jewish tradition (according to the Institute employee) claims that these twelve loaves fed all the Levite temple workers...about 1500 of them.

Sound familair? When Jesus fed the 5000, there were 12 baskets left over. He broke the bread and fed the people in a way that says, "Hey, it's me. The God of the Temple. The one you've been worshipping."

Now back to the regularly scheduled reading.

A donkey talks. Don't miss that. It's in your Bible. The one you probably have seven of. It says that a dude was riding an animal and it started talking to him because it saw angels with swords. Do you understand how crazy that sounds to someone that is sober? My car has personality. If it started talking to me about how it never broke down till today, that would freak me out... a lot....like stand-up-to-the-king-who-could-as-easily-kill-me-as-talk-to-me-a-lot.

So next time you're witnessing to someone and they say, "the Bible is a little crazy," you should reply and say, "YOU HAVE NO IDEA!"