The Tilting of Tubes

Tuesday was a Medical day - which always reminds me of that wonderful Victoria Wood line "as the doctor said to me when I had my tubes tilted...."  (you can fill in the rest yourself).   The tubes they seem worried about at the moment are my bronchial ones, so what the doctor at the Hospital said to me was "Mrs Knight, I'm sending you down for a chest x-ray".

On the way back we did the shopping for us and for Jacks. Her new medical regime hasn't worked any miracles yet, but we have to hope it will, given time.

I was out with Jean in the morning - we only managed two short return visits - but they were important ones.  It was a medical morning too as having failed to collect my meds from the Pharmacy over the previous 2 days (not ready, not checked - they are drowning in work) - I had to call again.  And we could not find a parking space anywhere near our first call. Jean can't walk very far these days, so we were just about to give it up, when I remembered that the pharmacy is only just round the corner, so I parked up there, we got the prescription and hobbled round and just caught our householder on her way out. She will deliver our message to her husband - to tell him we won't be able to call until Saturday week to discuss the blood issue - but she said that would suit him better anyway, as he finishes his current project by then, and will have some free time.

What we hope to be able to show him - and must pray to be able to show him - are these Scriptures.  Because he is a very thoughtful guy - along with being very funny. And he pays attention.

Genesis tells us that nature was not created "red in tooth and claw".  We did not kill and eat the animals, they did not hunt and kill each other.  But when our first parents made that terrible decision to cut themselves, and us (their unborn children) off from their Creator, their Source of life, they found they could not even keep themselves alive let alone run this beautiful and complex planet.  The peace of Eden was lost, and there came a time, after the Flood, when Jehovah gave permission for man to kill and eat the animals.  This is a sad sad moment.

At Genesis 9:3, 4, Jehovah said: “Every moving animal that is alive may serve as food for you. As in the case of green vegetation, I do give it all to you. Only flesh with its soul—its blood—you must not eat.”

You must not eat the blood.  Every one of us on the earth today is descended from one of the three sons of Noah, so this command was given to all mankind.  And it has never been repealed.

When the Jews became the chosen people, this command was included within the Mosaic Law.

Leviticus 17:11, 12 says: “The soul of the flesh is in the blood, and I myself have put it upon the altar for you to make atonement for your souls, because it is the blood that makes atonement by the soul in it. That is why I have said to the sons of Israel: ‘No soul of you must eat blood and no alien resident who is residing as an alien in your midst should eat blood.’”

 All those animal sacrifices under the Mosaic Law foreshadowed the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

And while it is very important to know that Christians are not under the Mosaic Law, it is also very important to know that the prohibition on blood was also enjoined on the Christian congregation.

Acts 15:28, 29 says  "For the holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to you except these necessary things: to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what is strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you carefully keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper. Good health to you!”

I was very surprised when I realised that.  And I was amazed at how cleverly it has been hidden from us, even though it its there in plain sight.