Short-term Prophecy

Now Jotham the sole surviving half-brother of Abimelech stood on Mt Gerazim and preached this to the citizens of Shechem:

Once upon a time the trees set out to anoint a king over them.  They said to the olive tree, "Be our King!"  Don't be silly, replied the olive tree.  Should I give up being a useful producer to rule over you?"

Then the trees implored the fig tree to  become their king.  "That is ridiculous," said the fig tree.  I am useful for sweet, lovely fruit.  Who would want such a  useless position?"

So they turned to the vine and the vine, too, rejected the offer, for it would rather produce grapes for the wine.  Finally they asked the thorn bush  to rule over them.  Perhaps because it wasn't doing anything useful anyway it acceded to their plea, and so the trees anointed a king!¹

"Now," continued Jotham, "this is what is going to happen: fire from the bush will consume the trees and the fire will also consume the bush.  You have treated the family of Zerubbaal thus. This son of his bondswoman has killed all our other brothers.  If you think this is righteous, take joy in his rule and let him take pleasure in you.  If not, however, let fire come out of Abimelech and consume you, Shechem, and let Abimelech be consumed as well!"

Prophecy fulfilled.

Three years into his reign the people of Shechem rebelled against Abimelech, he set siege to the city, a thousand of its principal inhabitants took refuge in the Tower of Shechem² which the king burned killing all within, but as he was igniting the thing a woman in the tower dropped a millstone on Abimelech's head.  He ordered his armor bearer to thrust him through with a sword that it might not be said, "He was killed by a woman."

¹Throughout history thorn bush and royalty equally useful.
²Select your tower of refuge very carefully. 

Father Named Him Twice #T

Joash the Abiezrite had a son whom he named Gideon "Destroyer" or he who bruises and breaks.  I think of him as The Hammer.  The Midianites were a scourge to the people, destroying their crops and means of livelihood.  The Lord revealed to Gideon that the people had strayed from His ways and their worship of Baal was the reason for their suffering.  Gideon tore down his father's altar to Baal, cut down the grove, built an altar to Yahweh and sacrificed thereon.

Upon discovering the destruction of the grove and the altar of Baal the people were wroth and demanded Gideon's life.  But Joash said, "What? If Baal is god, then let him fight his own battles."  So he gave his son a new name, Zerubbaal "He Against Whom Baal Contends."

Now Gideon was led to drive the Midianites back.  More than thirty thousand men showed up to engage the enemy.  The Lord told Gideon "No.  Take fewer men lest the people think they have prevailed and forget that it is I who give you the victory over the enemy."

Now we recall the Sunday School story about Gideon that we learned in our childhood in which Gideon tests God with the meat and the fleece, how Gideon finally selected 300 warriors to back him up.  The curious picture of the volunteers drinking from the stream, the selection of those who dipped the water in their hands and lapped it like a dog and so on. (Judges 7:5-7)  Seven decades after the SS lessons it occurred to me that there lies within this vignette a parable of alertness and preparedness.  Can we be ready to serve if our faces are immersed in the stream of worldly affairs?  Can we detect the enemy closing in upon us without sight?

God, true to his word as he always is, gave Zerubbaal and  his 300 men victory over the Midianites.Then the people asked this man to be their king.  "No," he said, "neither I nor my son shall rule over you, for Yahweh is King!

The story continues into territory beyond the Sunday school lesson in which we discover that Gideon lived to a ripe old age and had seventy sons "for he had many wives." But he also had a concubine in Shechem on whom he fathered Abimelech.

Sadly Gideon was hardly cold in the grave before the people of Israel again turned away from the true God and built altars to Baal, forgetting all the good into which Gideon and led them.

Abimelech aspired to rule the people, convinced his mother's people to support him in the endeavor to gain control, hired a bunch of lowlifes to assist him and killed 70 of his half-brothers.  The people crowned Abimelech, declaring him to be king.  Then Jotham, Zerubbaal's sole surviving son stood on Mount Gerazim and shouted the parable of the trees and the vine, then ran for his life.  (Chapter 9)

(Based on Judges 6 - 9)

I Can't Have It

 

Yesterday I told BBBH I wanted a hog oiler as decor in our front yard.

"No!" she said, "we are not hillbillies."


I'm hurt.  I had this wonderful idea.  Setting a hog oiler beside the sidewalk leading to our front door with a nice concrete, or fiberglass, Poland China rubbing up against it would be a fantastic representation of the economic contribution of our bailiwick.  Not going to happen, but imagine it with me.  Wouldn't it be great!

A Small Slice #T

Cloudy all day, about an inch of rainfall.  Somewhere in town someone is cursing the clouds and the water; somewhere someone is singing paeans for the blessing.  Around the corner a child is wailing endlessly, inconsolably, its mother passed out on the kitchen floor from an overdose.  Next door, a couple continues in its fifth year of prayer and visits to fertility clinics in an effort to have a child.  Down the street the preacher lives next door to the boozer.  On the "other side of the tracks" a couple and their six children live in a four-room cottage in ill-repair.  Both parents work to scrape together funds to feed the family and pay the rent-- to the mayor.  The seventy-three year old henna-haired lady behind that cash register goes to work daily because the medical insurance premiums and the cost of medications preclude retirement.  Someone would literally give you his last dollar were you in need, and someone else would literally rip off your last dollar if he could.

We are a diverse lot.  Don't write us off as Hoosiers who have no lives, uninteresting.  We are a kaleidoscope, ever-changing patterns, never-ending entertainment.  Get to know us.

Reporting from Perfect, Indiana, this is your fly-over country correspondent, Buford Bumpkin.

What Say You?

This thing has been on the table more than three  weeks now.  I hated it from the moment I watched the pieces cascade from the sack to the table top but we are a persistent couple.  Up to a point.  Is this the point?  Do we continue the agonizing frustration, or do we show ourselves to be quitters?

Consider this.  Working a jigsaw puzzle should be fun.  This one stopped being fun almost before it started (see above).  Excuse the photography* if you can and weigh in on this.  To do or not to do, that is the question.  (We have averaged about six pieces a day for the last ten days, at which rate you-know-where may be frozen before we finish.

*I turned the camera on.  It's broken.  The only thing I could see on the screen was broken colored lines, I could only point and trigger, literally, and you see  how that turned out.

A Clean House

This morning

 This afternoon

At least from the outside it appears that we have a clean house!  Sometimes cleaning has to go beyond the dust rag and the vacuum cleaner.

Work by Jerry Blackburn, Town and Country Power Washing.

50th Tipton County Pork Festival

49 years ago this week the Tipton County Pork Festival was launched, and thus it is that the 50th Annual Pork Festival will be underway Thursday, September 6 and will run through Saturday evening.

This link will take you to the festival homepage where you may find the schedule and the entertainment on the docket.

[Public service announcement by String Too Short to Tie.]

 

Most Recent Thousand

 Finished this morning;   

dismantled this evening.