Not perfect, but precious

Doing a bit of background reading relating to Psalm 26, one of the commentators suggested that David's crys of "Vindicate me... test...try...examine me" are really his way of asking the great Refiner to refine him. He is not trying to show himself blameless, hence the need for refining, but rather precious.

Did you know?

Jerusalem was once called Salem, and was the capital city of the king and priest Melchizedek who came out from his city to greet Abraham - then called Abram(Genesis 14:18-20).

I learned this whilst researching for a bible study on Psalm 24. The reason it is significant is that God's King, David was entering through those same "ancient doors" (v. 7,9) that were so significant in the journey of Abraham. For Abraham Jerusalem was simply a stop along the way, where he was greeted warmly in the name of the LORD.

For David, his triumphal entrance to the city, dancing with abandon ahead of the Ark of the Covenant signified an end to the wanderings of the Israelites - they were now able to ascend God's "holy hill", Zion, and meet with God if they were willing. The ascension of God's hill then was in many ways the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. In the same way, I look forward to the day when I might ascend God's hill myself, and be with God in heaven - and yet the Bible says I am already there!

OT as history?

Having been watching the ABC Compass documentary "It ain't necessarily so" on Sunday nights for the last three weeks, I have found that I have developed a sudden interest in the Old Testament and how it relates to contemporary (secular) history. I guess I have always considered the old testament to be an authoritative source for history in the region, but watching the documentary doing its level best to turn up discrepancies between biblical evidence and archaeological evidence showed me how much we don't know or can't correlate with other sources.

Whilst it's relatively easy to accept that for things like the creation story or some of the more "poetic" of the OT works, I was astonished that so little evidence seems to exist even to show the exodus from Egypt.

I have resolved that I want to know more.