Forty

 Where is the Candlestick maker in Genesis 40?

 

 

 

The Butcher (butler) the Baker and the Candlestick maker, were a trio that we learned in nursery rhymes from my earliest remembrances.  This morning, I rise from a 3 day sick hibernation to embrace the Lord’s Prayer, We shall behold him in Thess 4 and The Baker’s Demise in Genesis 40, before the comforts of Psalm 23 and Proverbs 8 put a setting cast on my soul.  It is as though my soul was broken by this sickness.  Cough and cold, low grade fever, but nothing that seems to threaten the life, it seems.  Still, God providentially made me wait for the weekend to swim in this dear and well trodden meditation.  

 

I am often Joseph in my imaginations, because he was the believer in the story of the butcher and the baker.  Sometimes, I am the capricious Pharoah or the butler,  but never the baker…. I do bake and I was baking when I was reading this time.  My bread is healing and comfort to me.  Tested negative for Omicron, but it seems that I just as easily could have tested positive and had only 3 days to prepare my soul for eternity.

 

Not a fear of death, but a seasoned and consistent knowledge that preparations are in order, everytime we endure sickness and even in the best of times.   The Butler was the server of the wines to the Pharoah and the memory of the gladness that he often gave the despot was probably what gave him his reprieve.  We will never know.

 

The Baker’s bread though ever so tasty was not enough to save his body and yet perhaps repentance and faith were granted in the 3 days that he was afforded to make his peace with God and that was greater healing throughout eternity.

 

As if, one of the ravens, dastardly tasting of the flesh of this sad tale, lessons are most numerous.  

 

I.                God is not capricious like a Pharoah.  He doesn’t flip a coin, as it were to determine the fates of his servants.   My times are in His hands and He alone holds the timepiece of my moments.

II.            All servants of God have something to minister unto him in worship and praise as well as service and prayer!

III.          Mene mene was later on the walls of a kingdom, who had forgotten the air that they breathe was lent to them.  You are weighed in the balance and found wanting.  We certainly don’t want that as an epitaph of our life, of our country of our earth time.  Globalists seem to forget this.  It is God’s earth and not ours.

IV.          Never Again, should we forget that ministering to god in worship and praise is highly a great use of the air that we breathe…