my quiet time today...

...(which, to say, was not quiet at all. A CD mixed with songs by some of the artists sprinkled in my "favorite music" list.)

This year I commited to reading the Bible in a year. I have caught up thus far, but that had to include a day where I had to read three days' worth in a night. Yeah. But today was---good, interesting...

Genesis 19. Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed.

I think that this passage fascinates people. I have read (a few) different poems on this situation, most specifically, Lot's wife looking back.

So, God's angels have told Lot's family that they need to leave Sodom and Gomorrah, as God was to destroy the city for its wickedness.

"By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah...But Lot's wife looked back and she became a pillar of salt." (Gen. 19:23-26, NIV)

Anna Akmatova's take (trans. Max Hayward and Stanley Kunitz):

Lot's Wife

And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.

I cannot suppose I know what is going on in Lot's wife's (could we give her a name?) desires or mindset, or anything else.

Maybe I will start out what I know to be true:

The Old Testament God is the same God of the New Testament who is the same God of right now and forever.

Yet, there is the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

Somethings I do not know:

What I mentioned, Lot's wife, what compelled her to look back and what was that difference between her and the remander of Lot's family.

It is not a matter of whether or not I 'agree' with Akmatova's poem. Phonetically it is beautiful (though translated) but I know that, if taken to represent what was going on, very biased. Maybe I too am looking at it with bias.

But already the first two lines have painted a picture that we know not to be true. The Bible is so devestatingly honest of the weakness of man. Yes. The great men were not perfect men. They walked with God---let him guide them, did things out of faith even when they were so weak.

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9)

Akmatova's poem isn't very overdone, but it does have the tint (I think?) of a mocking, ridculous man, overlooking his wife in the back, her eyes following "the red towers of (her) native Sodom." I don't want to propose the opposite in her.

"Looked back." I do not know what is meant completely by it, but---

Like an onion (yes) there are different layers to this. What can looking back say about her trust? Her faith (will God do what he says)? Her desire?

There is also a physical, literal act of turning back and looking. I think that it was C.S. Lewis (I am thinking in his book "The Screwtape Letters") that it is absurd to suppose that what you do in your physical life and the way you appear and act 'on the outside' has no bearing or effect on the spirtual, 'on the inside.'

"Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and in spirit." (1 Corinthians 7:34)

I know that this passage talks specifically about unmarried women, and obviously Lot's wife---wife. At the same time, there must have been a conflict of where her devotion lies.

Hm..more later (as I say). There's so much I could ponder on paper (or computer screen) about what I've read today. I will come back tonight.

{Yes, well, the New Covenant was something I did not fully grasp, didn't fully comprehend (do I think I do now? Is that even possible??) until probably this summer.} I will blog this sometime in the future.

semi-introduction, newsboys, and nonstalgia?

Hello.

Uh---well. This is. New.
I am Hannah. Des Moines is my home. Words are my release. God is my satisfaction.

There. Now, at the moment what has hit me in the face is growing up. "Growing up." Yep. And I do not suppose it is just because I am free from high school come this May. Not that I am (probably) going off the college two hours away, 'on my own,' starting with a new school, new teachers, new people, new church.

Church started this tangent.

It started when I stumbled upon the facebook of a (long, long ago) childhood friend. From the large friendly church I grew up in. Pause. I do not know what it is, but I cannot help but muse...what it would have been like to stay there. Grow up there. There. In that...community---or whatever it was that all of a sudden, like a fist, blew my breath out.

Yes. It was like seeing a finish, from little boy to man. And seeing the rest of them, what had become, almost as if I saw what had become of those little people I grew up with, sensing that I had missed something, as if I had died. Literally, broken away from something.

Now I come against the past. I---and I don't know why, as a rule, as a shutting out?---cannot remember much of my past. Some events I remember, and during the time in my life I can remember being aware of it searing across my brain, almost as if a little narrative had gone off, saying, "You are changed now"---and my pyschological make-up rings, signaling something.

For probably an hour last night I tried, I pushed, to get memories out from that church and the people I knew then. And they came. They had not wiped off. Some embarrassing ones. I remember my insecurities, my rivalries, my mistakes...I wanted (still want) to know more about the people.

Today (or yesterday?) I listened to the song "Something Beautiful" by Newsboys:

I wanna start it over/I wanna start again/I want a new beginning/One without an end/I feel it inside,/Calling out to me/It's a voice that whispers my name/It's a kiss without any shame/Something beautiful

What is it about those memories that makes me believe I have missed something beautiful?

12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:12-14

There is definitely more later on this. As for now, it is 3 am and I get up in four hours. Nice to meet you, let's talk again.