Building on the Foundation

It's been a hot minute since I visited the Psalms, but other projects have consumed my time and attention, from the three-part study on the clean and unclean laws to my upcoming history and study of feminism and communism. There's only so much time to study and write, so some projects get more attention than others. I'm quite excited about the upcoming post about feminism, and I learned a lot while doing the research for it and writing it, so I think it will at least be thought-provoking and hopefully educational. Stay tuned for that one. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on Psalm 6! Slash! The blood gushed out of the gaping gash in the neck of the massive bull and gurgled as it splashed sparkling red into the golden bowl. The giant bull's head slumped to the ground and the priest rose to his feet. He turned toward the door of the tent, took a deep breath, and prepared to enter, a thick rope dragging along behind him.  Atonement for sin used to be quite a compl...

Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’  We gather together on the weekly Sabbath, in the time between Trumpets and Atonement for a good reason.  There is always a Sabbath between Trumpets and Atonement, a time for us to come together between God’s high Holy Days, but also a time for us to look at connections and the full extent and glory of God's plan. It's a time for us to take a look into the past and get a pretty good idea of where exactly it is that we are going.  The numbers God assigned to the Holy days have meaning and a purpose, and the spacing of these days is not random. There is much we can learn from looking at the pattern of what God has done and the way He has set things up to work. He doesn't do anything at random, and He doesn't do anything by accident. He does things in types an...

  A day of great wrath and fierce battle, a day of celebration and a day of mourning, a day that is a thousand years. The day of Atonement has so many layers to it that one study or explanation would be offensive if it were to suggest that’s all there is to the meaning of the day. It’s the same for all of the feast days; as soon as we settle on what they picture and wrap it up all neat with a bow, we prevent further learning about those days. We like to have things all neat and decided and finished, but there are so many more deeper layers to these days. We shouldn’t be surprised by this; after all, God created the Holy Days, and anything He creates is wonderfully complex in its makeup. The thing we have to remember is that different Holy Days can picture and point to things that do not actually happen on that day.  As with all the Holy Days, Atonement is not so easily or neatly tied up with a bow. There is a lot of discussion about what different things mean or represent, an...