Slabs of Beef & the Bible

Yesterday, my To-Do list was longer than the time I had allocated to get everything finished.

So, I cut some corners...threw in my colored laundry with my whites (the whites were all tee-shirts--and the like--that remain unseen) so I didn't mind a colorful tint. Shaving time became the modus operandi of the day.

I am blaming it on my wife who kept me in bed in the morning past 9:00. She is slow to warm and wake up in the morning like a crock pot, and a freaking high energy and fast cooking microwave at night. I am a conventional oven in the morning, and a burned out stove element in the evening. Or maybe one of those flickering and dying bunsen burners caterers put under trays of food to keep it tepid. The dying, the dying of the light.

Anyway, I also usually make a stew on Saturdays--and start by defrosting the Wooly Mammoth-like frozen in the Siberian Tundra slab of meat, commencing Thursday morning in the fridge.

By the time I got around to making the stew, I was pleased to find that my always thinking ahead wife had previously cubed the pork shoulder months ago, before placing it in the garage freezer, where it was frozen and fused, looking like some roughly-hewn meat boulder. When I pulled it out of the freezer to defrost, it appeared as one solid piece. When defrosted, it came apart nicely, so I didn't have to cut it all up.

Meat is a good analogy for the Bible. People are hungry and need meat for their spiritual appetite. And, the soul-less daily news proffered by the media is more like junk-food Fritos. All macerated corn, no meat. Leaving one both over-fed and under-nourished.

The Apostle Paul employs the meat metaphor when writing of doctrine, as compared to the milk, given to the newly converted and those who refuse to grow-up in the faith. Yet, let us admit that the Bible is like a big slab of beef that needs to cut into bit-sized pieces. Commentators rightly help us divide the word of truth, not philosophically, but tactically and strategically, so that we can digest (understand) its meat. As you click the Commentators link, scroll down the translations of the verse to the Commentators section.