On Sunday Luba mentioned to a few people at church about the Jewish traditions involving honey.
One of them was that young kids were given honey before lessons (the links being Psalm 119:103 “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”)
The other was that young children starting in their religious training would receive a slate with verses on them and a sentence like “The Torah will be my calling”
As the kids repeated the verses back to the teacher, the slate will be covered in honey and the kids ate the honey, symbolically linking the part in the old testament scrolls of Ezekiel:
“…I ate it; and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth…” (Ezek. 3:3)
Apart from all the symbolism, and off course the natural goodness in honey, both as a food source, a supplement vitamin source and medicinal, I think the old teachers also knew that if you engage different parts of the brain through different senses, the ability to remember goes up drastically.
In a similar fashion, I always struggled to learn without purpose.
If I didn’t understand why I am trying to ingest certain information, it just wouldn’t stay. Math and physics in school was just no fun (unless something exploded… which rarely happens in math class) but later on in life, I started doing archery and the concepts of Kinetic Energy, Velocity, Momentum, Gravitational force, material deformation, Sine wave tension as in influence on accuracy, etc, etc, etc all made sense and almost became a natural calculation.
I couldn’t understand why I needed to memorise the various ministers and cabinet members… they were just going to change in 4 years, so why bother (In the last 3 years, the UK is on it’s 3rd Prime Minister (Theresa May, Boris Johnson and now Liz Truss)
But math, history and politics aside…
Consider the Forgiveness we receive from God
I was reading Romans 4 in the new testament where Paul is continuing his arguments that our Father doe not care if you are “Jew or Gentile” as long as you return to Him.
He quotes king David in Psalm 32:
“What happy fulfilment is ahead for those
whose rebellion has been forgiven
and whose sins are covered by blood.
What happy progress comes to them
when they hear the Lord speak over them,
“I will never hold your sins against you!”
(Psalm 32:1-2 TPT)
I didn’t realise it but I have been struggling with the concept of forgiveness.
Person A did these sins and … Forgiven.
Person B did these sins and… Forgiven.
It is like Oprah handing out iPads on her show, “and you can get one, and you can get one, and you can get one, everybody gets one!”
What is so special about it if everybody gets it?
Verse 8 broke it open for me today…
In the Notes, there was a comment about the greek word Logizomai…
Literally: “…blessed [the] man against whom no not will reckon [logisetai] [the] Lord, sin…”
It is a shopkeepers term, a business term, an accounting term. It quite literally refers to process and action of taking stock, measuring, counting and making record in the journals.
God, our Father, has gone, and personally tallied up my life. Counted and journaled my transgressions and then measured against payment received through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, and declared: “This is enough” – the bill is paid in full and no more is required.
The slate is clean. The books are balanced.
Never to be spoken of again.
No freebies were given away to everybody that shows up, but a personal payment was made… one I could never pay.
