Fire
"I'm so glad you came over for coffee. You know after our conversation last week I looked up that scripture in my Bible. That one in Mark..." Bessie said as she placed her coffee cup back in its saucer.
"Mark chapter 16 verse 16?" Alma thumbed through her Bible and found the reference.
"That would be it," Bessie said.
"Did you want me to read it?"Alma asked.
"Well, no, I was going to show you—it's not in my Bible."
"What?!" Alma clutched as her Bible began to slide. "That can't be..."
"Look right here—"
"But, Bessie, you can't just cut scriptures out of the Bible," Alma sputtered as she looked at her friend's book.
"Alma, it's my Bible, and that scripture is not in my Bible..."
Most of us aren't as bold as Bessie, but I know of people who believe the Bible is like a smorgasbord, or a buffet.
They pull out the points/parts they want. Maybe it speaks to a deep need, or maybe some spot in their heart. But the whole counsel of God? Maybe not so much do they want.
"If we would just follow the ten commandments this world would be close to a paradise." Dennis Prager from Prager U says, and he's right. Good and bad.
The ten commandments tells us what's what. The fact and idea that you can't separate the ten commandments from their author—God—is true as well.
Why is their author important? Why are they so succinct and short and to the point? As a kind of ex-child, and an ongoing parent/grandparent, it is important to keep rules short and sweet...short at least.
And as a child expert (see above qualifications) if you tell a child anything, "You can't have that cookie right now...", you know the first thing they do after hearing something like this is: "Yeah, right, who says?"
If you say, 'I do', their response is, 'Yeah, right.' as they eat the cookie, but if you say 'God, that's who.' Now, God has authority. Or He did, before we started trying to kick him to the curb.
We must stop that. People need to reverence God of the Bible. There is a standard of right and wrong, but if a society stops honoring God then lives slip into the gutter.
Several years ago there was a discussion about the names for God. Some people wanted the comforting... 'Daddy, God', using the text where Jesus calls God the Father 'Abba Father'.
But the problem is Daddy God isn't the meaning being put forth here. Years ago I would play a game in my mind: would you rather be hit by a train, or hit by a car?
This was a stupid game. I realized after years of this sort of setting up a scene, I didn't want either of those things. Be it being hit by a car, a train, drowning in a big pool or a pond, falling out of a plane or...
Claiming God as our Father should be comforting, and just as a father may allow a child to suffer for their own stupidity, a good father will exact justice for a wronged child.
In the discussion from several years ago, I asked a person, some one from Africa, what does your original word for God mean? What is the actual word and what does it mean?
The man gave me the original word, which I've forgotten/lost, but the meaning I won't forget. He said, the word means 'Fire'.
