{"id":879,"date":"2006-10-24T08:06:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-24T12:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/tuesday-october-24-2006\/"},"modified":"2006-10-24T08:06:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-24T12:06:00","slug":"tuesday-october-24-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/tuesday-october-24-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday October 24, 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>I just finished reading Psalm 136, the&nbsp;one I think of as the &#8220;for his mercy endureth forever&#8221; chapter.&nbsp; At first I wanted to raise my eyebrow and say, &#8220;oh yeah?&#8221;&nbsp; Where was God&#8217;s mercy when Hitler tried to eradicate the Jews?&nbsp; Where is God&#8217;s mercy when I feel despair and experience yet another blow?&nbsp; And then I remembered.&nbsp; My God is a God of complete holiness.&nbsp; A God of truth and a God of mercy.&nbsp; The way he rules the earth is much more like a democracy (you make your own choices) than a dictatorship.&nbsp; And I, seeing things horizontally, do not have the same perspective of God, who sees them vertically and horizontally and diagonally and inside out.&nbsp; <\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>Did God close his eyes to the horrendous evil acts of torture of the Gestapo agents?&nbsp; No.&nbsp; In perspective, how does killing several million compare to wiping off the population (except for 8) in a flood.&nbsp; Merciful.&nbsp; It seems worse b\/c this time there are people who love the Lord being killed and the bad man is exalted.&nbsp; It goes againsts my sense of fairness.&nbsp; But really, if God is not a God of mercy, He would have wiped Adam and Eve off with one exhalation.&nbsp; The earth could have been blown into oblivion then.&nbsp; Or he could have enjoyed the earth without people.&nbsp; Or he could have started over and this time created a man without choice.&nbsp; A population who could only please and worship Him, the way He deserves.&nbsp; <\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>God <em>is<\/em> mercy.&nbsp; And he proves that every morning when I wake up and get another chance to bumble around with the circumstances and decisions around me.&nbsp; And so,&nbsp;I keep singing.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>On a lighter note, I came to the conclusion last night that building a house has many similarities to birthing a baby.&nbsp; In the first stages of labor, you feel a rush of energy, a &#8220;wow the time is here surge,&#8221; incredible adrenalin and excitement.&nbsp; It doesn&#8217;t take long (maybe two months if you&#8217;re building not birthing) until you get past the first few contractions and the excitement disappears in fierce concentration.&nbsp; No distractions (read, almost no social life).&nbsp; No extra energy.&nbsp; Just focus.&nbsp; Focus.&nbsp; Focus.&nbsp; According to my rough calculations, we must be about 5-6 cm dilated now.&nbsp; I suspect we&#8217;ll hit transition when the time rolls around to paint and David Lee is working on trimming the interior.&nbsp; But for now I must focus.&nbsp; Breathe.&nbsp; Focus.&nbsp; Oh, I can&#8217;t wait to hear the doorbell cry!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just finished reading Psalm 136, the&nbsp;one I think of as the &#8220;for his mercy endureth forever&#8221; chapter.&nbsp; At first I wanted to raise my eyebrow and say, &#8220;oh yeah?&#8221;&nbsp;&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39ynQ-eb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}