About a year ago I rescued a Persian cat that someone had thrown out. I saw her when I was coming home from work one day. She was crossing the road and turned to look at me with the saddest expression I ever saw. Her coat was so bedraggled, it was obvious she'd been on her own for some time.
Nobody claimed her, or said they knew anything about her, so I ended up taking her in. As I was thinking about what name to give her, I remembered the story of Vashti, the Persian queen in the Book of Esther who was cast out of her palace because she refused a command from her husband. So Vashti she became.
Vashti soon became the hit of the neighborhood children, who were intrigued by her flat face, so very different from the other cats they were familiar with, and her unusual name. They wanted to know how I came to name her that, so I told them the story of Vashti. When I came to the conclusion, "and so he threw her out," one little girl frowned. "But wasn't it her palace, too?"
Aha! That was one very smart little girl! I explained that back then women did not have any rights. This little girl was probably too young to remember Princess Diana, but she was a "Vashti" who did not go quietly from the palace. I just hope that Princess Kate's story is happier.
This little girl's remark is an example of how changing times have turned some of the old stories' assumptions on their ends. It would have never occurred to me to think that Vashti had an equal say in the palace. The little girl, on the other hand, was brought up in a world where mommies had a say and could not be cast out of the house for no reason. Maybe her parents had divorced. I don't know. In her world, though, the story of Vashti has been rewritten with a much different ending.
Right now it is planting season and the farmers are out in the fields with their equipment, planting genetically modified corn and soybeans (the two biggest crops around here). Watching them I am reminded of the Parable of the Sower, in which Jesus talks about a man who goes out and throws seed willy-nilly, some landing on the path, some landing on the rock, some eaten by birds, some trampled, and only a small portion finding good ground and surviving to harvest. If that is how they farmed back then it is no wonder they had famines and food shortages! Nobody throws good seed around like that today, only if they are filling in holes in the lawn, and somehow I don't think Jesus was talking about grass seed. Even the Native Americans, the ones who practiced agriculture, took far more care with their seed than that. Yet the farmer who scattered the seed isn't considered foolish or praiseworthy; it's just how things were done back then. But what relevance does that parable have today? If the point is that it's just a matter of chance whether your work reaps rewards, then a better update in today's terms would be a man buying lottery tickets!
On Easter we sang songs about a risen King who lives in the skies. I'm an American, we haven't had kings here since 1776. Other countries still have kings, but they seem to be mostly figureheads. So what does it mean to speak of kingship in the modern world? When Paul wrote in one of his letters to obey the authorities because they are appointed by God, he obviously was not thinking of Of the People, By the People, For the People. And as far as living in the skies, what relevance does that have in the age of air travel and space stations? It seems like the Christian message is in serious need of an update.
Nobody claimed her, or said they knew anything about her, so I ended up taking her in. As I was thinking about what name to give her, I remembered the story of Vashti, the Persian queen in the Book of Esther who was cast out of her palace because she refused a command from her husband. So Vashti she became.
Vashti soon became the hit of the neighborhood children, who were intrigued by her flat face, so very different from the other cats they were familiar with, and her unusual name. They wanted to know how I came to name her that, so I told them the story of Vashti. When I came to the conclusion, "and so he threw her out," one little girl frowned. "But wasn't it her palace, too?"
Aha! That was one very smart little girl! I explained that back then women did not have any rights. This little girl was probably too young to remember Princess Diana, but she was a "Vashti" who did not go quietly from the palace. I just hope that Princess Kate's story is happier.
This little girl's remark is an example of how changing times have turned some of the old stories' assumptions on their ends. It would have never occurred to me to think that Vashti had an equal say in the palace. The little girl, on the other hand, was brought up in a world where mommies had a say and could not be cast out of the house for no reason. Maybe her parents had divorced. I don't know. In her world, though, the story of Vashti has been rewritten with a much different ending.
Right now it is planting season and the farmers are out in the fields with their equipment, planting genetically modified corn and soybeans (the two biggest crops around here). Watching them I am reminded of the Parable of the Sower, in which Jesus talks about a man who goes out and throws seed willy-nilly, some landing on the path, some landing on the rock, some eaten by birds, some trampled, and only a small portion finding good ground and surviving to harvest. If that is how they farmed back then it is no wonder they had famines and food shortages! Nobody throws good seed around like that today, only if they are filling in holes in the lawn, and somehow I don't think Jesus was talking about grass seed. Even the Native Americans, the ones who practiced agriculture, took far more care with their seed than that. Yet the farmer who scattered the seed isn't considered foolish or praiseworthy; it's just how things were done back then. But what relevance does that parable have today? If the point is that it's just a matter of chance whether your work reaps rewards, then a better update in today's terms would be a man buying lottery tickets!
On Easter we sang songs about a risen King who lives in the skies. I'm an American, we haven't had kings here since 1776. Other countries still have kings, but they seem to be mostly figureheads. So what does it mean to speak of kingship in the modern world? When Paul wrote in one of his letters to obey the authorities because they are appointed by God, he obviously was not thinking of Of the People, By the People, For the People. And as far as living in the skies, what relevance does that have in the age of air travel and space stations? It seems like the Christian message is in serious need of an update.
