Inside/Outside

I struggle with this in regard to drinking alcohol. I am not referring to getting drunk. I am referring to having wine with dinner or a beer after doing some yardwork or at a ball game. I have believing friends that would say I’m a stumbling block to others. I have other believing friends that would say Y’shua provided wine as His first miracle and drank alcohol Himself. Furthermore, when trying to follow Y’shua, scrutiny follows regardless and someone can always find something to pick at. While I certainly don’t simply throw my hands up and give up, this is a dilemna that one could go crazy trying to uphold.

Maybe Paul is again referring to Torah living – something relatively clear. But here again, Y’shua was constantly questioned about some of His actions as they “appeared” evil or a breaking of commandments. This is one case in point that maybe Y’shua seemed to uphold the Greek idea that pureness of heart overrides appearance?

To me this is an “other” worldview that is very difficult to infuse in my worldview. It immediately puts me on the defense rather than a mindset bent on acting in line with the set-apartness of HaShem. I find myself more easily defending what I think I want to do rather than what I discern would reflect the Lord.

I watched a TV show depicting a scene that took place in the early 60’s in the U.S. It was a picnic scene in a park. I was in my adolescence in the early 60’s, so I can remember instances exactly like what I am about to describe. A family was having a picnic in a park. Father, wife, son, and daughter. I can’t remember the cloth they spread out on the park grass, but I want to say it was the typically represented red and white checkered colored cloth, the official picnic blanket.

After they were done with the picnic, the wife packed up what the wanted to take with them leaving everything else, i.e. trash, on the cloth. The husband promptly and without any evidence of guilt, picked up the picnic blanket at one corner and simply displaced all the trash in the park grass, sending it hurling all over the place and leaving it where it fell and walked off toward their car.

My immediate reaction was practically involuntary. I lurched up from my Lazy Boy chair and gasped out loud! I immediately looked at my wife in astonishment and noticed she visibly reacted as well. It really was involuntary on my part, as if my body reacted to being attacked. I was more startled that I was startled than anything else. It was as if something sharp stuck me in my side, I reacted so strongly. I wasn’t expecting it. I was expecting a response more in line with my present day, global pollution awareness mentality.

When I was a youth back in the 60’s I wouldn’t even have flinched seeing that happen personally. I had been trained that this is normal and acceptable. I, indeed, had witnessed this very thing a of myriad times. Over the decades of training the populace, me included, to “Give a Hoot, don’t Pollute,” I was unaware of how ingrained not polluting would become in me. So ingrained that throwing anything out of the window would become anathema to me. While I have thrown out an apple core several times, it wasn’t without a pause of guilt somewhere inside that I was “hooting” by polluting. And then my analytical mind took over, rationalized it as accepted and I went on my merry way. Birds are fed, worms are fed, ants are fed. I did a good thing. The circle of life. Dust to dust. And all that justifying stuff.

My desire is that I increase giving a ‘hoot’ about what appropriately represents my King in this world I trample around in. I want people to look at me strangely wondering what it is that drives me to try to do such that is line with an ancient God or an ancient people in this so called ‘modern’ world.

I think I, too, will hold on to that apple core until I can come across a trash can. Who cares what I want. He cares what I do in His name. I desire His hesed.

Apple core, apple core, whose your friend…?

‘Form’/ paniym 6440 (in Hebrew) –
1) face

a) face, faces
b) presence, person
c) face (of seraphim or cherubim)
d) face (of animals)
e) face, surface (of ground)

1) before and behind, toward, in front of, forward, formerly, from beforetime, before
2) in front of, before, to the front of, in the presence of, in the face of, at the face or front of, from the presence of, from before, from before the face of

Gen 1:2 and darkness upon the face 6440 of the deep

This ties in with something that can be seen, as in ‘face to face’. Interesting.
So, anything that can be seen will be observed, and that reminds us of discipline in words and deeds. 🙂

Shalom!