One of the concepts my mind has run to recently is a daily list of “everything I need to think about today” as something to read every morning. My mind makes it a list a mile long and detracts from actually doing anything. The key to planning is to be more efficient not just to plan. So today I put more to dos on my list, and I keep thinking my list is approaching that upper limit of usefulness.

Today’s to do, so to speak, is to make sure and take some opportunity to incorporate those things I read every morning and the sermons I hear on Sunday’s into my everyday life and thinking. My daily readings are a few verses and a discussion by some pastor or writer, and I recently have started making a short phrase summary. Therefore, my new goal is to turn a week of summaries into a blog that will help me incorporate the concepts into my mind and help me determine my correct mindset. Upon first review, the daily readings may have no nominally discernable pattern, but that is what makes this seem like it will be fun for me.

My first set has nine days in it (all the better). My favorite summary of the week was the suggestion that Job contained 290 questions. I also heard this week that the Old Testament had 613 laws. (Again, my concept of “too much on a list”.) I am reading through Leviticus and have decided (again) that many of the things in the Old Testament do not apply to the gentile Christian, and that I can “ignore” some of those 613 laws. Not that I am trying to say someone can follow some and be right with God or that the law is not right in some function, but my relationship with God is right because of the blood of Christ who paid the penalty for my sin. I have no need to sacrifice a bull or a sheep or a goat or a dove or olive oil or cakes or any of those laws that God required of the Jews before Christ came. There are laws like not sacrificing my children and loving God with all my being that I do have to follow, but no matter how short I make that list, I will still fail.

I do not really intend to dispute the 290 questions in Job, but I have to doubt that the number is a product of deep analysis of which points need a question mark or a comma or other linguistic means to extract an exact number of questions from the text. I do hope to eventually have read each question and think through what the question is intended to communicate to me at the time. I get the feeling 290 is on the low side of contemplative phrases.

Some of my recent phrases were so generic to be of one word: Faith, Promise, Annihilate, Fruit, and Laws. I am sure each one made sense in the day, but weeks later they do not carry enough information to push forward a message. I can say that the laws given are to show us our sin, that we can know God through faith, that we can live life based on His promises, that we can find meaning in living for Christ, and

…I fall short on where annihilate fits in there. Annihilate comes from the story of Esther and is based on the hate of one man for another and the religious/racial/nationalist biases that can creep into a group from one bad apple. I am not in a position to address that today, but it does remind me to be aware of the impact a careless word can have in today’s environment….

Fruit is of course the outcome of our living for Christ in the lives of others.

One of the inherent clashes in the life of the Jews back in the day and in the lives of Christians today is how we deal with those who do not believe as we do. For those that do not believe in God at all, the question becomes “Everything, Accidentally?” For all the faults in religion (due to the sinful nature of man) believing that everything happened before now accidentally seems more off than believing some supernatural force pushed things along in one direction or the other. At the end of this train of thought, I go back to the concept that finding God is most likely when your spirit has been broken, you acknowledge that you are not in control, and finding that you have a broken and contrite heart that can only be healing by an active and living God.

This past week of cold related challenges has shown me that our lives today are built upon thousands of years of people learning things and passing on the benefits. When we do not keep up with the reasons for things, we push on without them, and learn the lesson over again. Or at least have the opportunity to do so.

We designed things for offshore Gulf of Mexico assuming the temperature would never get below the freezing point of water and the assumption holds so far. If we take the same philosophy to gas pipelines in Texas, we find the assumption does not hold and life gets difficult real fast.

When people “conquered” this country, one of the bigger threats was winter snowstorms. People in the North have annual conditions that make last week in Houston look like a good day.

I once again learned that God will provide and having faith in His promises is more than looking back at blessings, but is also looking forward to challenges, viewing them as opportunities for growth and/or serving others.

We still have four broken pipes and sacks of debris on the driveway, but we are not moping around in dismay. We are looking forward to how we can do better moving forward. It is a start.