For the second time in 6 months ... "first day on the new job".
It went well. They were prepared for me - had a nice office, already a login on the computer on my desk and email set up. Everyone was pleasant and I was welcomed over and over. So I think this is going to work out.
...
I want to talk just a bit about the scripture passage I put up yesterday because I had been thinking about it.
It irritates me a little bit when people read a whole bunch of stuff into a Bible story, that they can't really support. But I can't help speculating about this one. The man in the story had been to Jerusalem to worship. Either he was a Jew, or a person who was drawn to Judaism, or maybe just a spiritual person doing a survey of world religions, we don't know. But we do know that he would not have been allowed into the Temple to worship as another man might have been; because he was identified in the story as a eunuch, this would somehow have been obvious to the observer, and per Deuteronomy 23:1, "No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the LORD."
So am I wrong in seeing a bit of frustration in his response to Philip, "How can I understand unless someone explains it to me?" He may have gotten the complete brush-off and it still stung a little. But he was still drawn and wanted to learn, hence his asking Philip to explain what he was reading.
And he was reading about a man who was humiliated, deprived of justice, and would have no descendents. As chief treasurer to the queen of a wealthy nation, able apparently to travel freely, and not on foot, one wouldn't think humiliation and injustice would resonate with him, unless as previously speculated, he had been turned away rudely in Jerusalem. He certainly would have no descendents. So when he asked Philip who the prophet was talking about, himself or someone else, he possibly hoped that he was reading about someone he could identify with, who would have been sympathetic to him and whose religion would be accessible to him. And of course he was.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
My Very Eclectic Links
Blog Archive
Deep Thoughts
Controversy
About Me
- Laura(southernxyl)
- e-mail me southernxyl at hotmail dot com I am Laura, southernxyl. Where does "southernxyl" come from? First of all, I am from Mississippi and I've lived in the South since I graduated from college. When I was a kid my brother was a ham radio operator. I learned some of the shorthand expressions hams used to save tapping that key. One was "yl", for "young lady" (girl) and one was "xyl" for "ex-young lady" (woman). So I am a southern ex-young lady. I live with R, my husband of 30 years, and two cats.
4 comments:
Merry Christmas!!!
Laura,
I sympathize with you concerning people "reading too much" into a Bible story. Maybe you feel, like me sometimes, the converse to his frustration: "How can I understand what this truly means when you keep trying to (over-)'splain' it to me?"
With your metacontext of the eunuch you did not attempt to explain, but invited to consider. It is in such speculation that I often hear God speak most clearly to me -- not in matters of instruction of canon, but to his presence in my own situation. And this is such a time.
Thank you.
Bryan
Off topic: Loved your comments on Shannon Love's blog. I'll come back and read more of what you write here. Best wishes!
I got a troll comment emailed to me from this thread, but I don't see it here in the thread itself. Perhaps you deleted it. Perhaps Blogger has auto-filters, but the auto-emailing of followup comments is done before the auto-filtering.
It is interesting to know how things work.
(The troll was an anonymous idiot.)
Post a Comment