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LIVING BELIEF
APPENDICES
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THE OLD TESTAMENT STORY
OF GOD’S RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS PEOPLE
(Return to reference in Chapter 3)
CREATION: 12,000,000,000 – 150,000 BC
The universe and man were created, but man
sinned.
There once was a rich man who was named Theo. He befriended a poor girl called Ella and
gave her a beautiful house and garden to live in, asking nothing in return but
that she should look after it for him.
Ella had the full use of everything in the house, with the exception of
one particular possession of Theo’s which he asked her not to touch. But Ella took this for her own use, breaking
the relationship of trust between them, and with great sadness Theo told her
that she must leave the home he had given her, and that she could never return.
ABRAHAM:
God chose Abraham from among those living in a land of pagan
gods, and promised him a land and descendants.
Abraham trusted God and they made a covenant of faithfulness to each
other.
When Theo approached Ella again, several years later, she was living as a servant for people who treated her well one day and badly the next, sometimes paying her wages and sometimes not even giving her enough food. Theo told Ella that he loved her, and promised that she would again have a home of her own. But he said that in order to meet him there she would have to leave the little security she had and undertake a difficult and uncertain journey. Trusting Theo’s love for her and sure of her love for him, Ella agreed, and they were engaged before she set off.
MOSES – THE EXODUS: ?1290 – 1250 BC
God chose Moses to rescue the Hebrews, Abraham’s
descendants, from slavery in
In the course of her journey Ella had to take work in order to keep herself. At one point she found herself working for unscrupulous employers who exploited her and threatened her when she tried to leave. But one day a lawyer came to the place where she worked, with papers demanding Ella’s immediate release and instituting proceedings which would result in severe penalties for her employers. The lawyer took her back to his office, where she found Theo waiting for her, and together they set off for her future home.
MOSES – THE COVENANT: ?1290 BC
The people complained constantly, but God supplied them with
everything they needed. At Mount Sinai
Moses acted between God and his people as he offered them a covenant and they
accepted it. Even though the people
immediately broke the commandments which were to express their faithfulness to
him, God forgave them and renewed his covenant with them.
The journey was not easy and Ella soon became irritable,
complaining about the conditions and the food, and even saying that she would
have been better off staying with her former employers. Theo was very patient and got her everything
she needed. When they reached a small
town situated at the foot of a range of mountains, Theo asked Ella to marry him
there. She agreed, and the lawyer
witnessed their exchange of vows. After
the ceremony they celebrated with a meal at the local inn. Ella drank a lot of wine and began flirting
with the proprietor, even suggesting that he might have been a better husband
for her than someone who was going to drag her miles across the country to a
place that might not exist. Theo said
nothing, but when Ella saw his face she sobered immediately and begged him to
forgive her. When they set out again the
following morning the love and trust they had pledged had been renewed.
JOSHUA: 1250 – 1200 BC
On the death of Moses Joshua led God’s people, now called
the people of
At last Theo and Ella reached the home which he had promised
her, only to find that squatters had taken it over. Ella waited nervously as Theo went in to deal
with them, and was relieved when the intruders emerged a short while later, carrying their possessions and making off down the
road. Then Theo came out and led his
wife into her new home.
JUDGES: 1200 – 1020 BC
The twelve tribes of
The couple settled down to life in their new home. Sometimes one or other of their neighbours
would become difficult or aggressive, but whenever that happened Theo always
found the right intermediary to sort out the problem.
SAUL: 1020 – 1000 BC
The people demanded a human king and God gave them
Saul. But he sinned, breaking the
covenant, and he suffered a terrible defeat.
After a while Ella began to think that she could run things
better than Theo could. She heard about
others in their neighbourhood making a lot of money out of their investments,
while Theo seemed content to stick with getting a steady return on a low-risk
basis. She insisted on taking over the
management of some areas of their finances, and Theo eventually agreed to her
doing so, although he warned her that she could regret it. Ella was confident that she knew what she was
doing, and invested considerable amounts in shares that people said were going
to make a fortune. When things started
to go wrong she still wouldn’t ask Theo for his advice but instead consulted a
financial adviser she found from a newspaper advertisement. When this led to even greater losses, Ella
gave up and sank into a deep depression.
DAVID: 1000 – 961 BC
Theo gave Ella every care until she had recovered, and he
then helped and encouraged her to take up the work of planning their finances
once again. This time she was happy to
ask for his help, and with his support her confidence and skills grew rapidly. She managed so well that they were able to
improve and extend their home, and they lived there in great contentment and
ever-increasing love. Theo began to talk
of their having a child, a son who would embody their love and bring happiness
to others.
But then Ella did a terrible thing. She had everything she could wish for, yet
she set her heart on having a ring which belonged to a friend of Theo’s, a
woman living in poor circumstances and in ill health. The ring was not very valuable in itself but
it had great value for the woman as it was the only thing she had left from her
son who had died. When Ella could not
persuade her to sell it, she stole it from her.
The loss affected the woman severely; her health deteriorated and she
died not long after.
Ella told Theo what she had done and found her own guilt
even harder to bear than his grief and anger.
Theo accepted that she bitterly regretted what she had done, and they
were able to rebuild the trust and love that had grown between them.
SOLOMON: 961 – 922 BC
As the months and years went by, Theo became more and more generous
and loving towards Ella; she wanted for nothing and was absolutely sure of his
love. But then Ella began to take his
kindness and affection for granted, and even became a little bored with them. She found it exciting to flirt with other
men. Soon she was having brief affairs,
and eventually Theo found her with someone else, in their own home, in the room
Ella had furnished especially for him.
THE KINGDOM IS DIVIDED:
922 BC
On Solomon’s death the kingdom was split into two parts,
Ella had no more affairs, but there was a distance between
her and Theo. They tended to follow
their own pursuits, meeting briefly at mealtimes and discussing only practical
everyday matters.
THE PEOPLE SIN AND THE PROPHETS WARN THEM: 922 – 587 BC
The kingdoms became wealthy but they oppressed the poor,
breaking the covenant. The prophets
warned the people that they must change their ways or they would be punished,
but the warnings were ignored.
As Ella became increasingly successful in her financial
dealings she spent lavishly on new furnishings for the house, on landscaping
the gardens, on expensive clothes and on elaborate entertaining. But the servants Ella employed received
minimum wages for working long hours, and she always withheld payment to tradespeople until the last possible moment – sometimes
thereby forcing them into bankruptcy.
When this happened, some of Theo’s close friends warned Ella that she
was going too far, that her behaviour was becoming intolerable to him. She dismissed what they said,
sure that Theo still loved her too much to stop her from doing anything she
wanted.
THE EXILE:
587 – 538 BC
Theo tried to talk to Ella about her extravagance and about the way she was treating people, but she became furiously angry. Then when she was being pressed for payment over deals she had made she expected that Theo would pay to get her out of trouble. When he did not Ella had to leave their home and disappear to another country. She ended up in a city known for its bright lights and the fast, noisy pace of its life, but all that Ella found there was hardship and loneliness. As the years passed she came to regret bitterly the loss of her home, but above all Ella missed the love and goodness of her husband.
THE RETURN – TO LIVE UNDER THE LAW: 538 –336 BC
Cyrus, king of
One day there was a knock at the door of Ella’s tenement
room, and Theo stood there, his arms full of flowers and gifts. Ella started to ask him to forgive her but
Theo just told her how much he loved her, and asked her to come back with him
to their home. She threw herself into
looking after him and their home, and doing charitable work in the local
community. Everything had to be perfect,
but as the demands on her time increased Ella had little time or energy left in
the evenings to talk to Theo, or to give him more than a brief kiss before
falling into an exhausted sleep. Theo
tried to get her to see what was happening, but Ella thought he was criticising
her work, and so she tried even harder to do well.
LIVING UNDER FOREIGN RULE: 336 BC – 70 AD
The Jews were ruled by foreigners, first by the Egyptians,
then by the Seleucids, and finally by the Romans.
More and more of Ella’s time was
taken up by her committees and charitable work, and she felt confident that
Theo must be very proud of her. But her many
activities did not leave her much time for looking after their home, so when
someone came with the suggestion that they should take the job of housekeeper
she was happy to agree to the arrangement.
That was the first of a succession of housekeepers. Sometimes Ella felt that they were taking too
much of her role upon themselves, and she would try and re-establish her
authority. But in general she left them
to get on with it, and although she didn’t see much of Theo around the house
she supposed that he was happy enough with the way his home was being run. Occasionally Ella remembered that Theo had
talked about their having a son one day, and she thought that it would be quite
nice, so long as it would not interfere too much with the valuable work she was
doing.
JOHN THE BAPTIST: 30 AD
The last prophet of the Old Testament, and the first
of the New Testament. He proclaimed the
coming of Christ.
At one of her meetings one day Ella found herself next to a
friend she and Theo had known for years.
“Theo says you’re expecting a baby,” he said. “Congratulations. You must be very pleased.”
Ella tried to hide her confusion, and managed to thank him
for his good wishes before slipping away early from the meeting. Once she was alone she was able to admit to
herself that she had suspected that she might be pregnant but had put the
thought to the back of her mind. And
when she asked herself how Theo could have known, she realised it was because
he loved her so much and knew her so well.
On her way home Ella
thought about the child, and about the difference he might make to her life, and to her relationship with Theo.
(Return
to reference in Chapter 3)
Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version
Bible, Catholic Edition, copyright 1965 and 1966 by the Division of Christian
Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the
Quotations from Erikson,
E.H. ‘The Life Cycle Completed’ and
‘Identity; Youth and Crisis’ by
permission of W.W. Norton and Company Inc,
Quotations from Leakey, R. and Roger Lewin. ‘Origins
Reconsidered’ 1992 by permission of Little, Brown and Company (
Quotations from Rogers, C.R. ‘On Becoming a Person’ 1967 by permission of
Constable Robinson,
Quotations from Scott Peck, M. ‘The Road Less Travelled’ 1978
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Further
Kubler-Ross, E
‘Death: the Final Stage of Growth’ 1975
Simon and
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COPYRIGHT NOTES AND CONDITIONS
This
book is published only on the Internet. Copyright is owned by the author,
Barbara George.
The author hereby grants permission to the reader to print or to copy to disc
the whole book or any part or parts of the book for his/her own personal use.
Copies of the whole or any part of the work may be distributed to others, only in unedited form, but not for profit, and with acknowledgement of authorship. These same copyright notes and conditions apply also to the recipients of such copies of the whole or any part of the work.
Version 1, first published February 2000
© 2000 Barbara George
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