This Week's Story
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Life choices bring joy or loss depending on motivation and the Guide.
This Week’s Story relives American history and the Bible through brief inspiring stories presented on mp3 audio recordings and text for reading.
What is chosen? part four
Anne chose one year of Bible school. Fresh out of high school she was going to the mountains of Colorado. Mountain peaks around her soared to twelve thousand feet. She saw incredible beauty. Her frequent daily chore was shoveling snow, as snow fell during seven months. Choices and challenges opened to her at Bible school.
Before she left home we talked about my school year at a Bible school outside of Billings, Montana. I was nineteen turning twenty. That school was built on flat ground with no surroundings mountains, but there were visible sandstone rimrocks. They jutted up six hundred feet alongside Billings. On the lower flats there were ranches. Male students often preferred cowboy boots for familiar comfort.
The school provided opportunities for me to mature and love a culture that was unique for me. My previous two school years I had attended Wheaton College. There, I had some magnificent teachers, but I lacked self-discipline for consistent study. In my struggle I came to a certainty that God was real and personal. I needed His help to develop a balanced lifestyle for life. That was exactly what Bible school helped me to understand.
Balanced lifestyle would involve friends, work inside and outside, fun, studies, Bible study and prayer, witness, openness and respect for people, reading, the piano, and certainly flexibility. Days would come with bumps and blessings. God was to be my guide.
As I reread Old Testament stories, I realized the Jews and I struggled with choices and repeating cycles of obedience and disobedience. I pictured the Hebrews when God spoke the Ten Commandments to them with the sounds and sights of thunder, lightning, a mighty trumpet, and Mount Sinai enveloped at top with smoke and flames.
The people were terrified and begged Moses, “You speak to us. We will listen. Do not have God speak to us. We will die.”
Moses again climbed Mount Sinai. God spoke to Moses giving him many messages for the people. He promised that if the people obeyed Him, he would help them have victory against their enemies. He would guide them into their new country, Canaan.
Moses returned to the people and told them God’s messages for them. They were laws and directives to be used for dealing with a nation’s problems. Moses recorded these in writing. This was the beginning of the writing of the Bible.
Moses climbed Mount Sinai, probably eight times. One time he stayed forty days and nights. God communicated to him laws for justice, worship practices, the construction of the tabernacle, and dietary practices.
Rebellion erupted among many of the people when Moses was on the mount. They became impatient with waiting and persuaded Aaron to build a golden calf for them to use as an idol. They donated jewelry they were given when the Egyptians pleaded with them to leave Egypt after the plagues. They feasted and danced before the golden calf.
When Moses saw the chaos, he called the people who stood with God to stand beside him. The people who were turned against God were slain. Their cycle of obedience and disobedience brought sorrow to the people and consequences.
Moral choices affect humans in all nations.
Today’s story comes to you from Carlos Gamez, Todd Warren, and Barbara Steiner.
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