20170415 – Saturday – Study 3 and 4 of The Book Of Job

20170415 – Saturday – Study 3 Of The Book Of Job

I got up around 8.00 am his morning and dressed and drove to Waikerie to the Viewpoint Cafe again. They have come to expect me there and they quickly set up a table and chair out on the balcony. I had breakfast, eggs, tomatoes and bacon again with a steaming hot latte to top it off. I so love a cooked breakfast, particularly when someone else cooks it for me. I finished off last night’s post and added some photos and when I had finished, I drove back to the camp site.

It was study 3 of Neville’s Job studies this morning, and I enjoyed it as I expected to. After the meeting Judy Pearson from Melbourne came and sat next to me and we reminisced on shared past histories. She pointed out a number of her grandchildren who were in the hall. She had two children and has 10 grandchildren, and still goes to Mt Waverley. I think the last time I ever went to Mt Waverley was when her son-in-law Phil Perry and her daughter Wendy?? not sure had their first child and I think that was something like 50 years ago?? Where did the time go?

Ali and I stayed talking for ages and ages after the meeting, but eventually went back to the Gore and Samwell camp site and had a salad lunch which was lovely. I am spoiled, Ali and Cherie look after me so well. Leigh and I had our usual great discussions about all sorts of interesting topics. He is a very nice man and Cherie is a dear and they have been good friends for a very long time now. Leigh always chooses a topic that he knows I will disagree with him on, because  he loves a lively discussion. John Lunn was telling us earlier that last year the whole camp site was flooded and he said that if Nev had been leading a camp last year, then when he was sitting down, he would have been sitting up to his waist in water!

At 2.30 pm the children’s races began. They were held on the grass beside the hall. I took some photos and all the proud parents were their to cheer their children on. I spoke to Peter Gore who is my rellie and I told him all about his rellies right back to the Ark practically, well, at least to his great, great, great grandfather. I was feeling pretty tired by this time, but decided to drive to my Viewpoint Cafe haunt just outside of Waikerie. I had dinner on the balcony and did some reading. I couldn’t do any typing because my iPad was back at my camp being charged.

Study 4 is in the evening commencing at 7.30 but I am here early, sitting down and wondering where I put my walking stick. It has disappeared somewhere in my travels today. I will have to put out an SOS I think, though I might have left it at Ali’s place. We shall see. No it has gone. Have no idea where I have left it. Such is life! Well, study #4 was brilliant and I just loved it and will put up the transcript of the Houston equivalent tomorrow.

Chatted afterwards with one of Jan Hackett’s granddaughters, she is Simon Brumby’s daughter and she is married to one of the Steele boys. I can tell that I am really tired tonight because I simply have not been able to absorb the names I want to remember. Aagh!! Makes me so mad. Yes, I do have short term memory loss, but I shouldn’t be this bad. Also chatted to Rhiannon Bourke, a young girl I have not met before. She is from Heathmont ecclesia in Melbourne and is a speech therapist and, she told me, is good friends with my grandchildren, Jordan, Alex and Lara Stretton, which of course means that she is also good friends with all the other people I love at Ringwood and Blackburn in Melbourne. She loves music and singing and writing songs and I found her a very interesting girl. She is very pretty with dark curly hair and blue eyes.

I chatted to a number of others after that, mainly because I was too tired to get up and go back to my camp. Why was I feeling so bad? Well, Ali and Trev Gore had invited me to their caravan for supper and they were also having Leigh and Sheree Samwell, Roger and Helen Gore, Kevin and Ruth Gore and families to visit. around their camp fire after the meeting. I decided I would not go to supper but just go to my trailer and sleep. Ali had already told me that I was “grumpy tonight,” and she should know! Ali and I have been friends since 1974, over 40 years, so Ali knows when I am “grumpy,” and I WAS “grumpy,” and all round I thought It best that I keep my “grumpy” company to myself.

When I got back to my camp I realised WHY I was grumpy. I had gone the whole day without my diabetes drugs – no insulin, no drugs, nothing!! I got out all my gear and checked my sugar levels – over 20 !!!! and they should be between 6-8. I took out my “pens” and injected myself 70 units of Insulin and 20 units of Novarapid and a handful of tablets. So Leigh Samwell, if you are reading this, NOW you will know why I was over-sensitive this afternoon, so it wasn’t what you said, it was what I felt. I hate it that we are just a bunch of chemicals and that if our body is out of balance, we are out of balance.

And that is not the end of it, I am also feeling very ashamed of myself and have a confession to make (to cleanse my soul, as it were). After the studies many of us have been thinking about Nev’s words about the Satan and the three friends and how that Satan was a brother “in the ecclesia” who did not have Job’s best interests at heart, but the opposite, whereas the three friends, though really caring for Job, were none-the-less “miserable comforters” indeed. We were all thinking of times when we have interacted within the ecclesia in ways similar to the friends and it wasn’t hard to find times when we have thought or said or behaved in a way similar to those three friends.

We were all thinking of times when we have been like one or the other of the three friends in what we havesaid or done or felt in the ecclesia. Well, I found out tonight who I am like, I am not like one of the three friends, I am wors, I am most like the Satan. While I was chatting to a sister after the meeting, a particular brother walked by, a very “Job-like” brother, pretty well exemplary in character, except that he tended sometimes in my view, to be a bit “arrogant,” “dogmatic” and “way too judgmental.” Now during Neville’s studies he had described the Satan as being envious and malicious to Job, and this Satan-brother believed that Job had not been “punished enough,” and if he was, then he would certainly “curse God.” Well, as this other “Job-like” brother passed by, I said to the sister I was talking to (to illustrate the point I had been making about the book of Job) that this particular brother needed to have some trials, and then maybe he may not be quite so “arrogant, dogmatic and judgmental.” I said that!! Then I asked the sister I was talking to, “Who are you staying with at the camp” and she said, “That brother over there and his family.” And of course, who was “that brother over there?” The very brother that I had just told her needed some trials to make him more human and less judgmental. I don’t think I could have felt worse if Nathan the prophet had just said to me “Thou art the woman!” I apologised to the sister and mentally heaped dust and ashes on my head. Aagh!! I am 78 years of age and I still have NO wisdom.

When I went back to my caravan I thought it all through, wondering why I had said what I had said.  Was I envious of that brother? was that why I had said such things? Yes, I guess I was envious in a way, not envious of his possessions, not at all, but his good marriage, his unspotted, squeaky clean life. My life has been anything but “squeaky clean.” broken marriage as well as sundry other flaws too numerous to be bothered enumerating, an ENFP personality that always gets me into trouble (you will understand that Meg and Kate). Well, God tells us that we should confess our faults to one another and I really do feel better having put it down on paper.

You see, Nev made the point in his studies, that it was not that Job had not sinned, he had sinned, but those sins had been dealt with and forgiven, and I can’t afford to have “unforgiven sins” in my life because if Christ remains away, then I, at the age of 78, can only expect to live at most another 10 years, so I have very little time to “get it right.” I will have to change my “Satan-like” characteristics and hope the “Job-like” person that I so denigrated tonight will pray for me so that I can be forgiven by my Father in Heaven for my unwise words tonight.