Just kill me now!

This is a picture taken at the Hubbard Glacier in Alaska, so it's not the dessert and these are not Israelites, but it is wilderness and there were a lot of people.

As I got ready to read Numbers I wasn't very excited, but I am loving the relationship between God and Moses. It reminds me of Fiddler On The Roof. They almost banter back and forth.

Reading this morning in chapter 11 the people are complaining because they have no meat and Moses goes to God and says,"Why have you dealt ill with your servant?  ... Did I conceive all these people? ...If you will treat me like this, kill me at once." I cracked up. I could just hear Moses, "Really God? Am I actually responsible for this crowd? If this is what you have in mind, just kill me now."

My favorite part comes in chapter 12:6 & 7 after Miriam and Aaron have been bad-mouthing Moses, God responds to them with this, "Hear my words; if there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord." Mouth to mouth with God. Picture that. It's close. Friends around the table, honest, real ... 

The guest of sinners

That's Jesus. Maybe it's the new version, but I hadn't seen it quite this way before. After Jesus calls Zacchaeus out of the tree, Luke 19:7 says, "And when they saw it, they all grumbled, 'He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.'"

I can hear the disgust and see the sneer. The spiritual people of the day judged both Jesus and Zacchaeus, because Jesus dared to be the guest of a sinner, not just a guest even, but a self invited guest.

I'm glad, because he could come to my house.