Precarious Yates's Blog: Precarious Precipices, page 11

We’re All Role Models, a guest post

We’re All Role Models

1 Timothy 4:12

Set an example for the believers in speech,

in life, in love, in faith, and in purity.

 

I’m a mess!  There’s no doubt about that. I sometimes put my shirt on inside out or backwards. On a really bad day it might be both. I’ve been known to walk around with tags on my new clothes until someone takes pity on me. Most days, my husband gives me a once over to make sure I’m suitable to be out in public.

I tell you this for one reason. I want you to understand, I am not the person people come to in search of fashion advice. Anyway…the other day my husband and I went to a professional photographer.

When his turn came up for individual pictures, I kept fussing with his clothes, rearranging collars, zippers, and other things. We laughed as I explained to the photographer how out of character it was for me being the one adjusting his clothes. I told my husband, it was just that I could see things from a distance that he couldn’t see.

That’s how it is with God. He sees us from a distance and he sees what needs to be adjusted so that we can be a good example for other believers and nonbelievers as well. Perhaps, we’re too judgmental, too impatient, or need more compassion. A tug here, a tug there, a straightening of the collar.

Minor adjustments are usually okay with most of us. It’s the big adjustments that hurt. The big adjustments can change our lives in ways we never imagined. Still, His adjustments are for our own good, but it’s not necessarily easy, comfortable, or even welcome.

Whether we like it or not, we’re all role models. Someone somewhere is watching us, waiting to see if we are going to live our faith or just talk about it.

Are we willing to allow God to make those adjustments so we can be an example to others even if they’re painful? Or are we going to fight him every step of the way?

The choice belongs to each of us. Maybe, you think, you don’t need to change or improve anything. Maybe, maybe not….I’ll let you decide for yourself, but as for me, I know I need His adjustments, I’m a mess.

 

AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY:

 

Lillian Duncan…Stories of faith mingled… with murder & mayhem.

 

Lillian is a multi-published author. Her most recent releases include, The Christmas Stalking, Deception, and Pursued. Betrayed will be released in 2013. She writes the types of books she likes to read—fast-paced suspense with a touch of romance.

 

To learn more about Lillian and her books, you may visit her at www.lillianduncan.net or connect with her on a variety of social media sites. Her blog, Tiaras & Tennis Shoes can be viewed at http://www.lillian-duncan.com. She also has a devotional blog atwww.PowerUpWithGod.com.

The Decisions of Daniel Elliot: Superhero

Please welcome with me R.M. Strong, along with Daniel Elliot, the main character from her latest novel, Flash.

Flash is the sequel to Karis, a novel about a teen superhero.

Hi, I’m Daniel Elliot. I noticed Tamara has been doing a lot of these interviews lately, so I thought I might pick up some of the slack since I am part of the story, too. You should be glad I’m here and not her, too. She absolutely hates these things, and always has; you’d think that she would have gotten used to talking about herself by now, but no. So, I volunteered to talk about my very favorite subject in the world—Tamara.

I met Tamara right after she went to live with Paul. She was clearly in a lot of pain, but I felt an instant connection with her. Finally, I thought, I had found someone who would come to see life as I did. People who have gone through what Tamara and I have view life differently. Oh, sure, friends and family try to understand, but they really can’t. But here was someone who lost her parents at the same age I did. Granted, not in exactly the same way—my parents were killed in a shootout with the PyramidCity police department and hers were killed by one of Kingston’s supervillians—but they were close enough.

I thought she would start seeing the world the way I did, but it ended up being the other way around. After three years and a very close encounter with the Grim Reaper, I realized that I was the one who was changing. I eventually looked into that ‘God’ thing that she’s always going on about and made a decision to follow Jesus’ teachings. I wonder what she’ll say when she finds out?

I’ve since heard the term “missionary dating” thrown around a lot at church. All I can say about that is that I would have loved it if she had tried that with me, because I would have eventually gotten what I wanted from her. But, she stayed true to her annoying little convictions and shot me down every time. And you know what? I’m so glad she did. If it wasn’t for her example, I would have never decided to follow God’s teachings.

Now, all I need to do is to tell her. Wish me luck!

The Eagle and the Passover Lamb, a story

My name is Moses. I’m a crowned eagle. I am the 1748th Moses in this line of crowned eagles. Our ancient ancestor, Daniel, saw a man named Moses, an Israelite, obey the Lord and lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt about 2000 years ago. And to remember that remarkable story, all of us first born boys are named Moses.

But something greater than Moses, or rather someone greater than Moses, is here.

I was there three years ago, flying over the Jordan River when the sky opened up and God declared that the man named Jesus, the one from Nazareth, was His beloved Son.

I heard John the Baptist say this was the Lamb of God.

I saw Jesus spend forty days in the wilderness.

I saw the day He fed over 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread and two fishes. I had been hunting in that lonely place when all those people showed up to find Him. I saw how many thousands of them He healed.

And now this.

It’s been almost a year since I last saw Jesus, but there’s no mistake, there He is, riding into Jerusalem.

This is the time of year called Passover, when the Israelites celebrate how God freed them from slavery in Egypt. They kill a perfect lamb and eat it with unleavened bread.

Jesus shows up in Jerusalem riding on a donkey. On a colt, the foal of a donkey. Everyone is shouting praises to Him. I call out my own praises, but I don’t know if anyone hears an eagle over the noise of these crowds.

Then Jesus comes to the temple and clears away all the people who are disturbing the prayer times with their money changing booths. Jesus makes the temple a place of reverence again.

Every day, as it comes closer to the great feast, Jesus goes to the temple and talks to the people.

Then the day comes when, instead of going to the temple, Jesus is dragged before the local ruler, a very mean man named Pontus Pilate.

What is happening now? He has been beaten to where I can’t even recognize Him. And they want Him to carry a cross up that big hill?

People are saying mean things to Him. Some people spit on Him.

Can’t they see this is the Lord of glory?

Can’t they see He is the Lamb of God?

Along with all the other birds of the sky, I raise my lament. Who can believe this report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

The sky darkens in the middle of the day.

It’s so dark.

Jesus cries out with a loud voice, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit!”

We cry, all of us birds; some women, those who were with Jesus every time we saw Him, also cry. We weep and lament. What is the Lord doing?

The darkness fades, but now the sun is going down. They take Him down from the Cross. I still don’t understand.

For two days I have no desire to hunt. I cannot raise my usual song in the heights as I soar.

I do not have the heart to fly far from where they buried Him in that garden tomb. I stand there and keep watch in the trees, not far from the Roman soldiers.

It’s dawn of the third day since He died. In the distance, I see the women who followed Jesus. They are carrying large bundles. Their eyes look heavy from lots of crying.

The ground shakes. I take to the air so I’m not affected by this sudden earthquake. What’s happening?

The stone rolls away! There’s a bright light and some angels appear. The Roman soldiers fall over in terror. I’ve never seen men so afraid.

The women approach the tomb and are also afraid of the angels.

“Don’t be afraid,” one angel says to the women. “You seek Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here. He has risen from the dead! He is alive!”

Risen from the dead?! Alive?! What wonder is this! God has done something marvelous! The Lamb, the Lamb of God has died and He is alive again. Hallelujah!!

I see Him now, talking to one of the women. The sight of Him alive again fills my eagle heart with joy.

Before, when the lamb was killed at Passover, it was to free the Israelite slaves. Now, when the Lamb of God has been killed, what does it mean? Who is free?

I must go learn this. What a marvelous mystery!

Me and My Bad Self

Next time I ask God to do something, I won’t be so ready to assume how He will do it. Especially if it’s something as crucial as, “Lord, show me the Cross, show me what happened there!”

I asked this of the Lord several years ago. Since then I spiraled down toward what St. John of the Cross dubbed “The Dark Night of the Soul.”

And last year, for reasons I still don’t know (maybe because I asked Him again?), I took a nosedive into the Dark Night of the Soul.

Perhaps you’re not familiar with my bad self. I’m worse than I ever imagined. And I became quite intimately acquainted with all that badness over the last year.

Every day, for a year and a half, I opened up the Bible and saw myself reflected on its pages.

I fought against what I saw there. I kicked. I screamed. I threw every kind of protest I could — wasn’t I supposed to be beautiful in God’s eyes? The hideousness I saw in myself startled me. Vile pride. Murderous selfishness. Icky self-justification. The summary list could have been tallied in 10 point font and would have paved the road from the Gabbatha (the Stone Pavement) all the way to Golgotha.

I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t take it anymore. Shutting my eyes tight, I wandered around trying to find someone who would tell me that I’m not like what I saw in myself. And in desperation I declared in my heart that this wasn’t God showing me my bad self. It couldn’t be. Everyone always said He didn’t come like this.

They weren’t necessarily lying, they just might not have experienced what I’d been experiencing.

I had a positively wretched day a few weeks ago. I outright said ‘no’ to the Lord’s prompting. It was a low point. An agonizingly low point. As soon as I said no, I felt like Peter who had just denied the Lord.

I’m astounded by God’s mercies. Completely astounded. For years I’d been so caught up in thinking how good I was that I was never able to see His mercy, I mean really see His mercy, for how glorious it is.

Today was another positively wretched day.

I have an absolute abhorrence of death. A knee jerk reaction. This is really bad if one is a chicken farmer. I cry every single time one of my chickens dies. Every time. Today, the culprit was none other than my dog.

After guiding my daughter over to the neighbor’s house, so she wouldn’t be near while I took care of things, I walked to the back of my property, dog beside me with tail between her legs, deceased chicken in one hand, rope in the other hand, crying the whole way. I had to break my dog of doing this, and the most successful way is to tie the dead thing around the dog’s neck and leave the dog like that for a while. So I did what I needed to. I tied the dead chicken to the dog.

And my dog’s name?

Faith.

What a picture the Lord was showing me in the awful deed that I had to do!

I’d been carrying around sin which had been acting like a corpse attached to my faith.

I’m about to let Faith off the hook, so to say, and I’m sure she’ll never want to see a chicken ever again. Live or dead.

And as we walk through the steps of Holy Week, I’m ready to count the paces to the cross where I will lay all my sin down. And I hope, like my dog with chickens, that I’ll never want to willingly sin again.

Because now, more than ever, I know what it cost Him. He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. He became sin. For me. He carried my sin and the wrath for my sin so that I could be in relationship with Him.

And what was one of the most hideous portions of sin that I carried?

The idea that I was at all, in my own strength, good. That saying of Jesus, the one that confused me so much for years, now makes sense:

“Who is good but God alone?”

I see now how all of humanity is on a level playing field, or rather, all in the same cesspool / whirlpool of mire. In the cross, Jesus jumped in with us (I mean, who would do that willingly?) and provided, in Himself, the means for redemption from all that.

I am undone. I am undone by His singular beauty, by the One who is altogether lovely. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.

And as painful as my journey was to get here, I ask Him again, “Lord, please show me the cross! Let me know what happened there!” Because I know I’ve only glanced the surface of His unfathomable love. And that suffering I endured during the Dark Night of the Soul cannot be compared to the glory that will be revealed to me, through me, of Him.

A Bird’s Eye View of the Passover, Part 8

(You can find the other parts of the story here.)

Daniel, the Crowned Eagle, gives his view on the final plague and the parting of the sea:

 

Today has been the saddest day I’ve ever witnessed. As I flew from one end of Egypt to the other, I heard the sound of mothers weeping, fathers crying, brothers and sisters wailing.

One single man hardened his heart toward the Lord and believed he was a god. The king of Egypt, Pharaoh himself, hardened his heart, and because of his stubbornness all the firstborn children in Egypt died. You never know how many people will be affected by a single hardened heart.

Today has been the happiest day I’ve ever witnessed. As I flew from Egypt to Goshen, I saw all the Hebrew slaves rejoicing. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, summoned Moses, the prophet of the Lord, and declared that all the Hebrew slaves would be free—forever free from their slavery to the Egyptians.

I wheel down from my course through the sky to hear their praises. I love to hear all of creation praise the Lord, especially those who had been downtrodden.

As I come closer, I hear the Hebrews discuss the amazing events among themselves.

An old man speaks to his grandson. “We took the lamb, the perfect, one year old lamb, and we slaughtered it as the sun went down. We smeared the blood of the lamb on two sides of the door and on the top of the door. We ate the roasted meat with unleavened bread. And while we ate, the Lord delivered us. Not one of our children died because we obeyed! This night the Lord kept vigil to bring us out of the land of Egypt! Praise the Lord that I lived to see this day!”

“Are we really free, Grandfather?” the boy asks.

“We are really free, Joshua!”

“Praise the Lord,” the boy whispers. “Praise the Lord!”

The whole nation walks away free. My heart is elated by what the Lord has done for them! I follow this magnificent procession as they walk through the desert to the Red Sea.

Why has the Lord brought them here? What will He do next?

The Israelites build camp by the sea.

I catch my dinner from the crags of the rocks nearby and perch close to see what will happen.

My eagle eye catches what the Hebrews cannot see. Pharaoh, with 600 of his chariot and hundreds of soldiers, are riding and marching across the desert. The Israelites are trapped! I leave my half-eaten dinner to fly through the sky and cry out a warning to them. Some of the Israelites sound the warning trumpets. Everyone is in a panic.

Everyone, that is, except Moses. “Stop being afraid!” he says. “Stand your ground, for you will see how the Lord will save you!”

Moses lifts his staff and reaches his hand out over the sea.

A cloud stands before the Israelites, a pillar of brightness and beauty like the glory of the Lord. Behind the Israelites there was a cloud of great darkness and fire. The Egyptians didn’t come near the Israelites.

A strong east wind blows all night long. By the light of the moon and the light of the stars I see that a path has formed—right in the middle of the Sea!

The people of Israel, all of them, walk straight through the Red Sea on dry ground.

That cloud of darkness and fire lifts. I am glad I stayed on this side of the sea long enough to see the surprise on their faces. Who before has ever seen the sea part in two?

Pharaoh, in his rage, orders his army to follow the Israelites. He wants his slaves back.

But God wants them to be free.

All the chariot wheels stick in the mud while they’re in the middle of the sea.

Moses once again reaches his hand out over the sea, and the water returned to where it was before.

Moses and the Israelites rejoiced so loudly that I heard them from across the sea:

I will sing to the Lord,

for he is highly exalted.

Both horse and driver

he has hurled into the sea.

“The Lord is my strength and my defense;

he has become my salvation.

He is my God, and I will praise him,

my father’s God, and I will exalt him.

~ Exodus 15:1-2

* For those who think this may have just been ankle deep water that Moses and the Israelites crossed, how much of a miracle was it that the entire Egyptian army drowned in 6 inches of water? Just something to consider.

The Morning I saw 7 Rainbows: How Ireland Shaped Me As a Writer

Although I was reluctant to spend a night away from my husband  in the new country we’d moved to, we were in Ireland, so I expected something magical to happen.

I checked into the hotel that stood two blocks from the shore of the Irish Sea, feeling sad that I wouldn’t be able to see the ocean from my room. Then, as it happened, my room needed to be changed. Instead of staying on the second floor (or, as they call it in Ireland, the first floor), my new room would be off in the northeast corner on the fifth floor.

The orange streetlights out my window cast a hint that I’d see a sliver of ocean in the morning. But it looked as if the rocks of nearby cliffs would block most of the ocean view. It wasn’t the seaside getaway that I’d envisioned. At least the hotel smelled like an old sailing ship. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant smell, but since I love old sailing ships, it had redeeming qualities. I sighed, collapsed into the padded armchair beside the bed and opened my Bible.

My goal for the night and the following day was two-fold: to find refreshment in God’s presence and to pound the pavement looking for some much needed employment.

I fell asleep on the chair with the Bible open on my lap. Sometime in the middle of the night, I crawled into the stiff, but very welcome bed.

I didn’t realize that I’d left the blinds open. A blindingly bright sunrise over the sliver of sea I could see from my window nudged me to the most energetic wakefulness I’d felt in years. I leaped from the bed to the window.

A passing shower added to the sun’s brightness. And because of this shower, rainbows cascaded off the cliffs and into one another until they reached the ocean below. I sat back and counted them. One. Two. Three. My pulse raced. I knew I was seeing something rare and, in its own way, magical. Four. Five. Five distinct rainbows dancing across the cliffs right before my eyes. I grabbed my journal and chronicled everything that I saw, and everything the Lord was speaking to my heart about it. Promises. Rainbows speak of His promises. All of His promises are yes and amen in Christ Jesus.

As I popped into one nursing home after another on that rainy day, the morning’s ecstasy faded. No one wanted to hire me. I needed six months of experience in Ireland, not America.

As I dragged my feet toward the station to catch the mid-morning train, I decided to look up at the sky and breathe out one final prayer. Before the words left my mouth I saw them: two more rainbows, one on top of the other. Six. Seven. I had just seen seven rainbows in one morning. I didn’t find a job that day, but I found joy in the Lord and I found home in Ireland. On that train ride, I picked up my pen and decided that I’d write fiction again while I looked for a job. The job turned out to be my fool’s gold.

From the ravines where silver waterfalls and bleating sheep are the only things that break the silence, to the shorelines and cliff walks that stretched far longer than my stamina, Ireland’s landscape (and people) inspired me. I wrote my fantasy trilogy while living there, and very many of the things I describe in these books were written because I saw them, felt them, smelled them, experienced them in the land, the wind, the people and the sea of Ireland.

Book giveaway:

If you’d like to win a paperback copy of one of my novels, leave a message below with the title of the book you’d like to win. Here are the titles:

The Elite of the Weak (book 1)

Pharmacia: Those Magic Arts (book 2)

The Captives (book 1)

Pyromarne (book 2)

How Shall We Love?

The winner will be selected at random on the evening of March 18.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Shout Out to a Favorite Author

My most recent novel, How Shall We Love? is a contemporary romance. But what many do not know about this book is that I give a tribute to one of my favorite authors, a man who wrote one of the most endearing fantasies of all time: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Fantasy is one of my favorite genres to read and write, so when I sat down to write a romance, I had to connect it to fantasy somehow! For that reason, I named one of the characters Reuel.

Reuel, the skater-punk/evangelist who has a profound impact on the main character of the novel, is one of my favorite characters I ever wrote. He’s confident, agile and full of forgivable flaws. And while he’s almost nothing like his namesake, he does have character traits similar to a few characters in The Lord of the Rings: the servanthood of Samwise, the playfulness of Pippin, the unwavering character of Aragorn.

I may never write a contemporary romance again, but this one burst forth from me and changed me in ways I didn’t expect.

You can download this book for FREE to your Kindle, or Kindle app, both today and tomorrow. And I’d love to hear from you if you also love the character, Reuel!

link to the e-book

A Bird’s Eye View of the Passover Story, Part 7

As I’ve shared before, my daughter loves birds, and one of her very favorite birds is the vulture. Yes, if you can imagine it, a five year old girl has the vulture as her favorite bird. One of her favorite games is to lie down on the grass and pretend she’s vulture food to see if the vultures will swoop down. Oh, the games that children invent!

I decided to lump 9 of the 10 plagues together in this version. I have a list of all 10 plagues at the end of the post for those who are interested. I also decided to have fun with this story. In the eyes of children, vultures are either mean or silly, so I chose silly.

Without further ado, let me introduce Gad and Ahaz, two griffon vultures who really enjoyed the bad times the Egyptians were having:

The Vultures’ Version of the Plagues

Gad, the griffon vulture, wheeled down from his circuit of the desert sky toward a non-descript carcass lying on the sand.  “Ahaz! Why didn’t you tell me you found some food?”

Ahaz munch greedily at the whatever-it-was. Gazelle? Donkey? Well, it didn’t matter much to Gad. He dove right in. At Gad’s fifth bite of the mystery meat, something funny shaped and tickly went down the wrong way. He hacked and gagged.

His friend stepped away from his lunch and rolled his eyes at him. “You been near Egypt today, Gad?”

Gad deposited an unidentifiable piece of mystery meat onto the desert sand. He looked at it as if it’d be able to tell him why it choked him.

“It ain’t gonna talk to ya, Gad,” Ahaz said. “I was talkin’ to ya.”

“What was you sayin’?” Gad stared at this unswallowable bite on the sand. Oh well. Some food just can’t be eaten. Then he remembered his friend Ahaz’s question. “Oh, yeah, I’ve been down by Egypt today.”

“Was it still dark?” Ahaz asked.

“Dark as ever dark could be,” Gad said.

“Creepy.” Ahaz dove back into his meal.

“Second day it’s been dark over there. But so much strange stuff’s been happenin’ there in Egypt, I’m hardly surprised anymore.” Gad contemplated another bite of the mystery meat, but it wasn’t anywhere near as appetizing as the food he remembered from the last couple of weeks. “Hey, Ahaz, you remember that first strange thing that happened? How the river water of the Nile all turned into blood? You remember?”

“How could I forget?” Ahaz exclaimed, pausing once more from his lunch. “All those fish died. I hadn’t had a decent meal in, well, weeks, then we’s had ourselves a buffet of sushi.”

Gad sighed contentedly as he recalled that day. “All you can eat sushi, too.”

“Then the frogs.” Ahaz looked almost giddy. “They went all throughout the houses and then died.”

“Ooh, yeah, they swept them up into whole piles of lovely rotting frog legs. What a delicacy. God was givin’ us vultures a treat then, wasn’t He?” Gad giggled. “I could eat like that again!”

“The lice were annoying, though,” Ahaz said.

“Those flies too. Annoying. One of them flew right up my nose.”

Ahaz rolled his vulture eyes. “I didn’t need to know that, Gad. Yuck.”

“Oh, but those dead cows and goats, they was good,” Gad said.

“Fast food burgers, vulture style.” Ahaz turned his beak toward the air as if he was relishing the memory. “But poor cousin Uzza, those burgers made his stomach hurt for days.”

“Pestilence, that what those animals had.” Gad was proud of the fact that he knew this big word, pestilence, that meant sickness. Most vultures didn’t know big words.

“Those boils on the people weren’t very interesting,” Ahaz said as he returned to his lunch.

Gad agreed. “They didn’t look very happy. And no extra food for us. Then came that awful hailstorm.”

“I haven’t been in Egypt since that day,” Ahaz said, “except for yesterday morning when I saw the darkness.”

“Well, I was there, Ahaz,” Gad said. “After the hail came these locusts. They ate pretty near everything that could be eaten, as far a people’s crops went. And then, when those locusts left, the darkness came. I can smell food in Egypt, but I’m so scared of the dark, I don’t want to go near there.”

“I wonder why all this is happenin’?” Ahaz asked.

“Well, the story I heard from the sparrows is that a man named Moses told Pharaoh to let the Hebrew slaves go free. But Pharaoh said no.”

“People can be so stubborn,” Ahaz said. He turned to take another bite of the mystery meat.

Gad figured he’d give the meat another try. He found another piece that tickled his throat and he hacked it up on the sand beside the first piece. “I know, they’s stubborn alright.”

“I wonder what will happen next.” Ahaz said. “Can’t be good if Pharaoh keeps bein’ stubborn like this.”

“I know, right?” Gad scooted over to another section of the mystery meat to finish his lunch.

A list of the 10 Plagues

Water turns to blood
Frogs
Lice
Flies
Pestilence on the livestock
Boils on the skin
Hailstorm
Locusts
Darkness for three days
Death of the first born

These plagues may have occurred over the span of a year.

Feel free to use this story as you teach your kids about Passover!

A Bird’s Eye View of the Passover, Part 6

No Straw for Bricks So a Staff Becomes a Snake

“This new guy rolled into town the other day,” Hannah the sparrow chatted to her friend Leah the sparrow. “His name is Moses. Did you see him?”

“I did see him!” Leah sang loudly. Sparrows know that people don’t understand them, so they talk about whatever they want as loudly as they want. “He marched right up to Pharaoh’s palace and told him to let God’s people, the Israelites, go to the desert and worship the Lord.”

Another sparrow named Ruth flew up and picked up a breadcrumb that Hannah was about to get. But that’s the way sparrows are. “I heard what Pharaoh said after that. Did you hear what Pharaoh said?”

“What did he say?” Hannah asked.

Ruth told the story to Leah and Hannah in her chattery and sparrow-like way, but this is what happened:

“Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.”

Then Moses and Aaron said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Now let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God, or he may strike us with plagues or with the sword.”

But the king of Egypt said, “Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away from their labor? Get back to your work!” Then Pharaoh said, “Look, the people of the land are now numerous, and you are stopping them from working.”

That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and overseers in charge of the people: “You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’ Make the work harder for the people so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.”

Then the slave drivers and the overseers went out and said to the people, “This is what Pharaoh says: ‘I will not give you any more straw. Go and get your own straw wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced at all.’” So the people scattered all over Egypt to gather stubble to use for straw. The slave drivers kept pressing them, saying, “Complete the work required of you for each day, just as when you had straw.” And Pharaoh’s slave drivers beat the Israelite overseers they had appointed, demanding, “Why haven’t you met your quota of bricks yesterday or today, as before?”

Then the Israelite overseers went and appealed to Pharaoh: “Why have you treated your servants this way? Your servants are given no straw, yet we are told, ‘Make bricks!’ Your servants are being beaten, but the fault is with your own people.”

Pharaoh said, “Lazy, that’s what you are—lazy! That is why you keep saying, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.’ Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks.”

The Israelite overseers realized they were in trouble when they were told, “You are not to reduce the number of bricks required of you for each day.”  When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them, and they said, “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”

“The Israelites were so mad about that,” Ruth said.

“But guess what I just saw!” Hannah said. “You won’t believe it! You won’t believe it! God told Moses and Aaron to do something, and they did it!”

“So, did you see what made everyone at the palace scream a little while ago?” Ruth asked.

“Yes! I did!” Hannah said.

“What did God ask them do? What did you see?” Leah asked.

This is what Hannah saw:

So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and… Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said.

Lunch w/ Cornelia

Here’s a fun lunchtime contest that relates to my new book:

Thirteen year old Cornelia can have a strangely bleak fridge. While her father is away on a lecture tour, all Cori finds in her fridge are:

tofu
carrots
broccoli
beets
soy cheese
hummus

Leave a comment below for a chance to win an Amazon gift card (winner picked from a hat at 6pm today).

If you have all 6 of these items in your fridge, and/or, you know what Cori made for dinner that night, leave a comment for a chance to win a signed copy of the book (as well as a chance to with the gift card)!

 

link to the e-book