The Lord is My Helper

 

 

The Lord is my shepherd.

Psalm 23:1

 

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If you're searching for a balm for wounds, this photo goes to a kind and comforting blog,

from someone who knows a little about Heaven.

An old movie used to air on TV at Eastertime, when many of us were young children, giving us a glimpse of what standing on Mount Sinai may have been like in the day Moses received the ten commandments from Heaven.

A movie could only imagine that history; but the Bible helps us see more deeply.

The Bible's history helps us know a people, and our Creator, who are more than Technicolor, and more than black and white. But tragically, we seem to be living at a time when more doubt than believe that history. Some mock and rebel against our loving, heavenly maker, who patiently considered millions of years but a "day," just to prepare for us.

But more than once, God was sorrowful He made mankind, because mankind was apt to be foolish and even evil. In early years, men and women sacrificed children, and didn't have sense enough to leave women alone during times of menstruation. Witchcraft abounded. And many people behaved worse than other animals, despite being created in God's likeness, with capacity for goodness and morals.

When the world received the opportunity for salvation, when God finally gave of Himself through Jesus, more people began to come to their senses. And God promised that, although even believing people in church were created lower than "angels" or heavenly messengers, we would one day judge even angels, that our heavenly crowns would carry us higher in responsibility than God's most heavenly messengers have been.

Mankind grew in faith. Man became penitent. King David, for example, had made terrible mistakes, but through real repentance became a man after God's own heart.

But King David was not all people. Many people, without conscience or repentance, preferred cultural practices including sexual deviance beyond anything any animal ever does. Many refused to know God.

 

Meanwhile, most base animals, without moral sense, didn't do filthy things. Some animals instinctively, by sense of smell, mourned when death was approaching. And mammals nursed only up to a certain age, in many cases with closed eyes.

But foolish men don't understand that.

 

Foolish men don't understand things like a baby giraffe being born six feet tall. And animals like deer may seem to some foolish men to be full grown at two- to three-months old; and such men (instead of counting the weeks) think the worst when the ten-week-old fawn, who is only beginning to eat whole grasses, may still need hydration and nutrients from its mother. But, even then, at ten weeks to three months, the fawn knows to avoid parts of the mother that would pose a health hazard.

Why don't men, with moral ability, know any better?

Some people count Bible history as culture, and say culture is king today. Some say the God of Israel was only man, and that man determined what was good and what was evil.

But to believe that way, is to be downright satanic — worse than lost in unbelief.

Why would God, in revealing Himself to Israel, ever say animal sacrifices were a pleasing aroma? One answer, according to the Bible, is that God gave man that word to speak and write, only because those sacrifices were a "shadow" of the way God planned to one day give Himself. It's not that the sacrifices were actually pleasing; it was that God was pleased the day was approaching when He would reveal the better and perfect way — to end the sacrifices: to end idolatrous sacrifices of animals (sacrifices made in place of trusting God), and to end sacrifices of human flesh.

Meanwhile, man was learning better discernment about what God meant for him to do with Heaven's creation. Man was learning to pour blood away from foods meant for sustenance (so food would not be disease-prone nor upsetting to the tummy — and would actually smell pleasing to cook, in contrast to sacrifices of flesh and blood that was not meant to eat), to work with non-food animals in clean and productive ways, to have mercy on animals Heaven clearly meant to keep nature in order and to help us labor, and to give thanks for the abundance of fish and fowl that seemed made just for man (e.g., the fish and chickens still left here from the dinosaur ages!), for food.

God created us able to learn, to grow, to not be foolish. And, after a while, Heaven began to be pleased with us.

I wish we were still so, today.

 A deer at three months