QUAIL

It has taken me a long time to really start to get to grips with advice from my shepherding visit, and to start to read the Bible daily, consistently.  I do read it all the time, in that I follow the weekly schedule for the congregations worldwide, but this is my own separate reading, beginning at Genesis 1:1, which tells us with unique clarity: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

I am doing a chapter a day, and taking it slowly and carefully as the brothers advised.  There is so much in the Bible. So much in the first chapter of Genesis for example.  Bear in mind that I had an intensive religious education at my convent school, and also later attended a small Protestant Church that sincerely would have regarded itself as fundamentalist, but it wasn't until I began to study the Bible with the Jehovah's Witnesses that I found that the answer to one of the questions I had had for so long was right there - in the very first chapter of Genesis.

The question was, why, if there is a God who is almighty and all good, nature is "red in tooth and claw with ravine"?  Why would a loving God have created it that way?

Wondered about it for nearly 40 years, until those two JWs called.  And there the answer was in Genesis - He did not create it that way! 

"Then God said: “Here I have given to you every seed-bearing plant that is on the entire earth and every tree with seed-bearing fruit. Let them serve as food for you. And to every wild animal of the earth and to every flying creature of the heavens and to everything moving on the earth in which there is life, I have given all green vegetation for food.” And it was so. After that God saw everything he had made, and look! it was very good..." - Genesis 1:29-31

This was not a world full of the hunters and the hunted, not a world where nature was "red in tooth and claw".  It was paradise, a paradise of peace. But it was lost.  And we, along with the animal creation - the blameless animal creation - are still living in the tragedy of that lost paradise.  Which is why we need God's Kingdom to come to restore the peace and joy of paradise worldwide.

And the Bible also contains a promise that carefully details that restoration.  If you look at the context of this, you will see that it refers to the time when God's Kingdom, with Jesus at its head, is ruling over the earth:

 The wolf will reside for a while with the lamb,

And with the young goat the leopard will lie down,

And the calf and the lion and the fattened animal will all be together;

And a little boy will lead them.

 The cow and the bear will feed together,

And their young will lie down together.

The lion will eat straw like the bull.

 The nursing child will play over the lair of a cobra,

And a weaned child will put his hand over the den of a poisonous snake.

 They will not cause any harm

Or any ruin in all my holy mountain, because the earth will certainly be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah

As the waters cover the sea.

- Isaiah 11:6-9

This does not explain why this blog is headed Quail, and now there isn't time, but I hope to get back to it, and it has given me a nice photo (from Captain Butterfly of course) to head the blog.  But it all comes back to the shepherding visit, when the brothers (the shepherds) read me a short account of the quail Jehovah supplied to the Israelites in the desert. And what they did, and what happened next.

When you actually stop and look into the details of the short account, you see why Jehovah had it recorded and preserved for us.  We can learn so much about relying completely on Jehovah, on knowing that he can and will support all who exercise faith in him.

So I hope to get back to it.