Grains of Sand

There is a kind of “love/hate” relationship between us and the future. We want to know and yet we fear to know. If there are happy things out there beyond today, that’s all good. If the future is not so happy, well, perhaps by knowing now we can somehow be better prepared when our future becomes our present. On the other hand, part of us is reluctant to add to tomorrow’s burdens to those of today, though we often do it anyway. The Lord knew. The future was no surprise to Him. And while the burden of knowing didn’t cause Him anxiety, it did cause Him pain. In Luke 13:34, 35 we find recorded these words: “ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who would kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ” We know what Jesus w...

Reading: Nahum If Jonah had still been around in Nahum's time (see http://lyndasgrainsofsand.blogspot.com/2011/09/better-class-of-help.html   ) he would have been gratified. When God sent him to Nineveh 150 years earlier to warn the Ninevites that God was about to destroy the city and its inhabitants, they’d all repented and Jonah had not been pleased! Now Nahum appears on the scene to deliver the message Jonah would have liked to have been commissioned to deliver. This time there was no opportunity for repentance and Nineveh’s destruction was assured. The Ninevites were a nasty bunch. It took one hundred and fifty years for Nineveh to go from totally repentant to totally unrepentant and sufficiently evil for God to say “enough!” That’s pretty fast work—frighteningly fast. But it is the picture of God on a mission that jumps out from the page. “ The LORD is a jealous and avenging God…The LORD is slow to anger and great in power; the LORD will not leave the guilty unpunish...