Joshua and Jericho

 The Ark of the Covenant was carried into the Jordan River and the waters piled up on the flow side and dry earth appeared for the Israelites to cross into the Promised Land. Ahead of them was the City of Jericho. Jericho is said to be at least 11,000 years old. In these modern days it is located in the West Bank. When the spies from Israel spoke with Rahab who lived in Jericho and protected the two spies from the government of Jericho, she spoke of God as He wanted the world to view Him. He had dried up the waters of the Red Sea so that the Israelites could flee safely from Egypt and the pursuing Egyptians. The success of the Israelites against the Amorites had also told the people of Jericho that God was great. Chapter 2 verse 11 "....... The Lord God is indeed God in heaven above and on the earth below." are said to be the words of Rahab to the spies as she protected them and told them how to escape the city. She asked that her family be spared when the Israelites came and the promise was made and kept because she helped them. 

The story of the fall of the City of Jericho is also an early memory from Church and Sunday School. I think in  my mind I want to think that God early on wanted to send His Son Jesus to us and that He promised it early on but the reality is that those prophecies are still to come according to the scriptures. I think quite clearly God wanted the world to know that He was the only true God who had created this beautiful world. He insisted that the Israelites pay perfect obedience to His laws or suffer the severe consequences in order that He would remain amongst them. 

Am I right that Armageddon has come and we have actually survived; that World War II and the demonic Hitler did not succeed in bringing on the end of the world. The signs were so very strong in Revelations as seen in the world at that time it appears but was it something that came into my brain as a child. Why do I think that? I am I think working my way through my thoughts in that regard and whether God meant that peace would come to all the world and all the countries would work together with their people to make this a perfect home full of peace. That satan and the satanists would be forever banished from our world. That three of the Great Religions of the World (known to me) worship the same God - Judaism, Islam and Christianity - can exist in our world because only God decides how He appears to us through the ages. Jesus came to soften the very strict laws of the Torah and Islam has its own God given existence. 

I was finding the daily readings although appreciated did not clarify items in my mind that were being tossed back and forth between my thoughts. Reading the Bible from cover to cover will answer my questions I think. Choosing the Revised Version Catholic was always a personal choice as it includes Books that are not in the King James Version. 

The great discovery yesterday was most interesting. This family is descendant of Robert Siderfin and Grace Kent through their son Thomas as my line is descendant through his older sister Elizabeth (Betty) (Siderfin) Rew. The match as fifth cousins at 53 cM is large (not huge) but does vary between 0 and 117 with 25 being the most common according to Blaine Bettinger's Shared cM Project.  However that 53 cM match is on Ancestry and TIMBER does reduce the number of cMs if the particular length includes a common area (i.e. common to the British Isles or a particular area in the British Isles in this case). There is a noted pileup area between 44 cM and 53 cM on this chromosome. I do have a number of matches but this one that is traceable is very useful as it again definitively supports the idea that this Thomas is a sibling of Elizabeth (Siderfin) Rew. On Ancestry it is a single chromosome match following later in the chromosome so part of the deletion could be the common pileup area. Rereading and saw that I had put fourth cousin but I am a fifth cousin to the person on Ancestry. Age is catching up to me for sure. 

Today is cleaning day one and it is the top floor. We were busy yesterday moving some furniture around to make it easier to manage and so a good day to begin the cleaning just to clear away any accumulation caused by the moving about. 

We are into a very warm week this week with temperatures well into the thirties and the humidex as high as 48 right across Canada from Alberta to Quebec. 

Solitaire puzzles to do.  

 

 

An amazing match

 I was working on the Siderfin book and I do need to revise it unless someone else does as the index is incorrect with page numbers. Sometimes it is right but I think in general the further you get from the front of the book the less accurate it is. However, I had a match with a descendant of the Siderfin family in Ancestry. Her daughter has now tested at My Heritage and I am able to see how much we match. The match is smaller (actually more than 50% smaller) and with the use of TIMBER I have no idea how large the actual match was but we share 4x great grandparents Robert Siderfin and Grace Kent and this new match would be my 5th c 1xr. Amazing that the tester's mother was so much larger. Occasionally I did inherit Siderfin matches that were larger but primarily my other siblings inherited those matches. 

Church today was one of those special sermons that  was delivered by the Right Reverend Peter Coffin who is filling in for this part of the summer. It is very pleasant to see him back in the pulpit as he was Dean of the Cathedral when we first moved from Dominion Chalmers to the Cathedral as Edward decided that it was time that he supported me with my Church as I had attended his United Church for many many years. I was extremely flexible on the Church that I attended as my Uncle/maternal Grandmother had been United Church and I went with them as a child when I visited which was often enough actually. I was familiar with the United Church. But I must admit I was happy to go although I had been attending the local Anglican Church at early service for quite a few years and then went to the later service at Edward's United Church with all the family. The readings at the moment include Romans and the sermon addressed this very interesting Book of the New Testament and I found it most interesting to hear his thoughts on Romans. 

Well time to run and get my exercise. I will continue looking at the new matches in My Heritage as I have already marked two new ones that are interesting but will not add them to my database at this time but this new one for Siderfin I certainly will.  

The simplest way

I think it is a truism that the simplest way works best anything convoluted results in a meandering path that is difficult to follow. Deuteronomy points that out to us throughout the many chapters in this book. The rules of life that need to be there in order that God can continue to walk with man, in this case He chose the Israeli people whom he freed from slavery in Egypt. It was a hard and difficult path that the Israeli peoples had to follow and this Book of Deuteronomy was a continuation of how that path had to flow. 

 Although I was skeptical of the story that the early peoples of the British Isles were descendants of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, re-reading the first five books of the Bible has reinforced my thoughts in that regard. It was just a thought that grew in the 1800s and was thought about and then shared with this granddaughter when she was just five or six and my grandfather was 75 years of age. As I continue to read I will learn more about the movements of the Israeli people particularly during the times of the Babylonian Empire and all the other Empires that have risen and fallen through the centuries but the Old Testament deals primarily with the time period up to the birth of Jesus Christ. 

 Joshua is the next book of the Bible and I will read that beginning on Monday. I must admit I am not yet seeing the promise of a Saviour/a Messiah but the people of Israel are following the laws of God as they enter into the Promised Land. Moses has prepared them well for the road ahead and Joshua will lead them following the laws that God has given them. That is how I see this by the end of the book of Deuteronomy. I think that fear of the words kept me from really understanding the flow of words in the Bible when I was younger. 

I awoke in the night and read my chapters a bit earlier than usual. I will go back to sleep soon but sometimes my mind becomes too busy and I can not sleep. A lot of items are in my mind at the moment. 

The best way to reach our goals with our military spending is also the simplest way. The GST should never have been reduced. It was done to buy votes and I absolutely hate that. Put forward a decent platform and defend it well but do not buy votes with stupid promises to reduce it in his case it was the GST to be reduced to 5% and it should have remained at 7% because it supports government expenditure and in this case it needs to be directed towards defense spending (we were even told that was always the plan to reduce it to 5% and there was no such plan announced by the then Prime Minister Mulroney and it was a fabrication). Raise it 1% every six months as the employment improves and our projects start to pay their way - no rush, the submarines are still a while off. We need to tighten the belt that keeps us on a good and straight path towards adequate defense and an adequate life for the people of Canada. The big item is to live at home when you graduate (unless you can not because you found a job away from home) until you are financially sound so that you can go out in the world buy that beginner home and live your life.  

The forest fires in Quebec are affecting the air here and we have a smoke day for today. I had planned to weed the front gardens but it will wait for another day. Hopefully it will pass quickly and we will be back to clean air once again. 

I did some work on the matches yesterday looking at My Heritage and Ancestry. There are some new large matches on My Heritage that may be helpful but I will use the note feature to attach them to a grandparent unless I see value in extracting the match into my files. 

Perhaps I will work a couple of solitaire puzzles to put me back to sleep once again.  

My waking up in the night and working was common during the period that I proofread at home when my daughters were young. I would just do a couple of hours of proofreading and then back to sleep. Now in my 80s it has become a somewhat rarer event. 

Sunday and off to Church in another hour and a bit. I have been watching some YouTube videos on the first five books of the Old Testament and there have been comments where the narrator has put forward the idea that within these readings there is mention of the Messiah to come and help the Israeli people with the heavy task that had been placed upon them. What I read is that the task set upon the Israeli people in order to have God live with them was very exacting and precise and any infringement was punished immediately. I do not see any movement away from that precise and exact adherence to the rules set down in the Torah. I do know that I am reading towards the prophecies of the coming of the Messiah.  

The trees

 All my life as long as I can remember I have loved trees. When the Dutch Elm Disease reached London back in the 1950s I watched as the disease took one tree after another all the way down Wellington Street. These beautiful trees down the middle of the road were gone so quickly and I think the city did truly mourn their loss. That is why London was called the Forest City and still has that nickname although heard less often now. 

In the readings today from Deuteronomy Moses tells us that God said:  Chapter 20, Verse 19: .... you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them ..... Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you?" Such beautiful words as we are now into the season when forest fires (many many of them natural caused by lightning strikes) are common throughout our forested areas. It is sad to see the trees burn but going to Obatanga Provincial Park just west of Wawa in Northern Ontario (nearly 10,000 hectares of wilderness) a couple of years after a forest fire we found fields full of orchids and other fascinating wild flowers Edward and I on our travels with our trusty canoe in the north. It was absolutely beautiful. Edward had never really traveled anywhere before we married and after we bought the car we went so many places like that to see the beauty of the world around us. The trees left standing were blackened but some recovering and new growth everywhere. It was both sad and beautiful all at the same time. 

Rereading the first five books reminds me of all the Laws that Israel was required to keep in the Promised Land. The last set of chapters continue with the laws and they were many. I still do not sense that God is yet telling Moses to tell us that He will send a Messiah to the people. To me the first Five Books of the Bible are telling me the ancient story of Creation and the length of time from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy is to me a very long period encompassing so much that has happened in the world since its beginnings. I remember as a child someone saying (I think he was a priest from another place (I was very young)) that a day at the beginning could have been many years as God created this beautiful world we live in. I think he might have been a student actually as I contemplate this individual and not yet consecrated as a priest (vague memory now from so long ago). I was a restless child always and my mother would hold me down in the seat to keep me quiet but this time I listened so carefully to what was said as I remember it still. I was maybe four years of age as I recall it was when I first went to kindergarten I think and was learning to sit still. But the laws that the Israeli people must obey are clearly outlined by Moses particularly in Deuteronomy. 

Yesterday a very busy day of weed pulling. The tomatoes are now free once again of all that weed that was amongst them. They continue to grow quickly with fruit upon them not yet ripe. We also planted an herb (Basil) in the shade that we bought grocery shopping. Still more weeding to do and perhaps some today; time will tell. 

I have not accomplished any work but did look at new matches as the beginning of the month passed and I did not do that. 

Solitaire puzzles to do.  

 

The Torah

The first five books of the Bible are called the Torah and are the foundational texts of Judaism - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Continuing reading Deuteronomy which, to me, represents Moses preparing the people of Israel to enter into the Promised Land and to hand over his leadership to Joshua. Perhaps one of my most vivid memories of Sunday School was the trumpets under Joshua that heralded that entry of the people of Israel into the Promised Land. At least that was the way that I saw it as a child. The reading is certainly not quite so direct but none the less it was Joshua who led the people of Israel forward into the land that had been promised to their forefather Abraham and continuing to his son Isaac and his son Jacob. In Chapter 10 of Deuteronomy the essence of the law is expressed by Moses to the people of Israel:  Verses 12-14:  O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,  and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. 

 Another busy day yesterday buying groceries and it poured as we rushed back to the car with our grocery cart but we had worn rain coats so somewhat ready for that. But it was a very heavy downpour. The tomato plants have enjoyed it for sure. Salmon for dinner with potato salad and lettuce salad. The summer meals are always somewhat simple but energizing. All of the vegetables are now grown in Canada as our growing season is now well past the length for producing food for the plate. So much of the year we must buy usually from the United States or use stored food which is fine but fresh is even better. 

No work done but winter is around the corner and lots will get done. I need to weed today and will do that. The heavy rain will make that an easy task. Perhaps two or three bags of gardening weeds for the pickup on Monday. 

One item we did get done was all that scanning that we needed to do and had collected up. We have a couple of big scanning projects - my husband's thesis still not yet done and some other items that he had done through the years but not published. Some pictures of flowers in the northern woods that I find to be exceptional we want to put into a book in his memory of all those travels we did by car and then by canoe into the backwoods of Northern Ontario. So much to do and time will tell how much I accomplish in that regard. 

Exercises done a while ago now as I awoke early. Breakfast soon but first solitaire puzzles.