New stone tablets

 The other night I found myself wanting to read a bit of bible, so I did what any self respecting biblical scholar would do, opened it and read what was on the page it fell open at. I was intending to thumb through to get to the psalms, (always a good place to read a little morsel of encouragement or a glimpse into God's character ) But I didn't make it that far, and instead read this ' Moses Gets New Stone Tablets' , now as you may have picked up, I am a quite partial to buying new things. But reading this made me smile - I am not entirely sure I would be all too pleased with new 'stone tablets'. However, as I delved deeper into this chunk of bible ( exodus 34 if your interested ) I discovered that these tablets were pretty cool ones !


Moses and his new shiny stone tablets, were all about God writing things on them for him and his people to live by. He goes up a mountain and talks to God, you know, like you do.

The first thing God says is 

' I am the Lord, The Lord is a God who shows mercy, who is kind and doesn't become angry quickly, He is kind to thousands of people ' 

That's what you want to hear isn't it, at anytime, but especially when you're on a hill on your own with the creator of the world. Awesome stuff.

I could share lots of thoughts, but the ones which have stuck with me are these.....


Firstly I have been thinking a lot recently about how I live, what I do with my life/time/thoughts. And if I'm honest, at the moment I don't always feel very proud of the way I go about things, I'm often a bit grouchy, sometimes unkind and have very little patience for some people. But these words of the Lord's are not only lovely to know about His character, but kind of gave me a proverbial kick up the bum about how I could be, would love to be ( I won't use the word 'should' cos there are far too many 'shoulds' flying around these days ).


Then later on in the passage it talks about the sabbath day, about how even during times of sowing and bringing in the harvest, we need to have a total day of rest. I'm no farmer, but I'm pretty sure sowing times and harvest times are fairly crucial to your crop working out, so you know, if ever there was an excuse to pull a 7 day week I think that'd be it. So there are thoughts for me about that too, and how I want our family to incorporate this into our weekly routine.


As ever with me, there are few conclusions, but I felt so very in awe of the God I serve after reading this. My faith at the moment is the opposite of an armadillo, it's strong on the inside, at the core, but very soft and messy on the outside. I have more questions than answers, confusion instead of clarity, but reading things like this bring me back to the rock of what it's all about.


God is merciful, slow to anger, and kind to thousands of people.......................how wonderful is that ?


...................and how inspiring to be more like him.

But I have to say, I think I'd prefer a new pair of shoes than new stone tablets.