Ensign: Bloodwork

All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye. Isaiah 18:3


AN ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS                                        24 June 2016


I can stand the sight of blood.


My title refers not only to the four vials I had drawn from me yesterday in preparation for a six-month checkup I'll be having next week, but also the pricking of my finger I have to do every day to get an accurate blood sugar reading for me, and hopefully discerning what or what not to do to get it under control -- even though there are moments I think it's a racket, but that's for another day. And I just realized took up the whole paragraph!


I must work on that.

Blood was and is used to cement people's relationships to their gods. I use lowercase because it's not only true of the LORD; witness Baal's prophets cutting themselves open on Mount Carmel to catch his attention against the LORD God of Elijah in 1 Kings 18 and the numerous admonitions against and deities who call for their worshipers' children to be passed through the fire throughout the Old Testament. Witness our own will and lack thereof to speak for the most helpless of all.


For we practice both extremes.


But I'm not going to expend myself, not going to work, not practice my vocation by shouting other people down or marching in front of clinics or capitols. I can stand the sight of blood (see above) but I don't like shedding it. Does anybody? Indeed, God places such an importance on and such a vitality in blood that he calls it life. See Leviticus 17:11 in full for that, and the passage it's in forbids the eating of blood and even today those of us who eat meat typically don't eat blood with it.


So blood's not good for you, but it is very useful in you.


Outside of you, me, or the other person or animal being bled, blood's ability to transport nutrients and waste from place to place is useless. But the use of blood in sacrifice for sanctification, for being made holy, goes back to antiquity (that's a fancy word for "we have no record of the first time it happened") for that very thing. And the hymn "There Is Power In The Blood" comes to my mind as I'm typing this -- it would have started this piece, except now I feel it would be tacked on.


Would you be free from the burden of sin? There's power in the blood, power in the blood.


The reason we don't have to cut ourselves open today or our God -- and yes, here I'm speaking to the church -- doesn't demand a blood sacrifice of us is that it's already been made. Jesus God's Son Who bled and died on the cross and rose again. I like Hebrews 9:12's wording, "Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us." I urge you to please read this whole chapter.


So the power's not in us ourselves, it can't be.  

For that matter, please check out the four separate accounts of Jesus' death on the cross in the New Testament. (In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John for the uninitiated -- and even for the initiated!) I understand that while they differ on minor details, they create a larger whole picture on understanding WHY the death of one man should make a difference to you or me or anybody. It has and does to thousands on thousands of people over thousands of years.


Despite the bloody mess,


David