July 10, 2009
If you grew up Baptist there was one thing (among many) that you did NOT do: dance! I remember my Baptist grandmother telling me stories of how people were reprimanded for dancing in public back in the day. Baptists were known not to play cards or go to movies. Wow, it must have been exciting to be a Baptist in the 1930’s.
In 2 Samuel 6:1-5 & 12-19, David dances with all his might. Why? David decided to move the capital city of the Israelites from Shiloh to Jerusalem. He wanted to bring the Ark of the Covenant to be in the new religious center of the nation. It had been a long time since the Israelites had a specific location that would serve as a center for worship. Now, the Israelites had this symbol of God’s presence carried into the center of the Jewish people. You can imagine the excitement.
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Posted by Alan Rudnick
June 19, 2009
Meteorology has always been a fascination of mine. I would watch the TV and check out the internet websites that forecasted major weather events like hurricanes and snowstorms. Weather storms are an interesting meteorological event. Storms can be predicted but never do they present themselves as the weather forecasters predict. Every summer and fall, hurricane predictors try to figure out how many major storms will hit land. As we have seen from hurricane Katrina, storms can catch us off guard and teach us that we must be careful how we prepare for storms.
I think I loved weather events as a kid because that meant that there would be no school. I guess I still have a little of that still in me, except I do not go to school anymore. I remember one storm that hit the Mid-Atlantic with so much ice they closed school for days. The storm iced everything with a half inch of slippery,cold ice. All of the kids in the neighborhood broke out their ice skates and we skated all over the roadway! The only way you could get anywhere was on ice skates. We loved it because everything was shut down and we were stuck, which meant the school buses could not pick anyone up.
In this week’s readings, we read about two storms: one on land and one on the sea. In the first storm, we read about David, the young anointed one in 1 Samuel 17. David comes to the front line of the battle to face the giant Goliath. This little shepherd boy is mixed up in this battle just as the armies meet. Nobody thinks that David can beat Goliath, who represents the strength of the Philistines. David is caught in a political storm as these two nations meet.
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Posted by Alan Rudnick
