ORDER AND DESIGN

    I do not have OCD, but I do confess that I like order in my home.  Now that I am retired, I am not so much into spotless, but "picked up" and "kinda" clean. (Do not open drawers and closets!) I might go to more trouble when I know I am having company, but otherwise, I remove the clutter that seems to reproduce on its own.  

When I began the reading in Genesis in January, I was again taken with the with the orderliness and design of God in creation, and have seen Him use Moses and Aaron to ORDERLY marshal the Israelites to move out of Egypt. How do you move some 600+ males and that is not even wives and children? Animals also?  They have been one year+ out of Egypt, and have been camped at Mt. Sinai where God has given them laws for their spiritual and physical welfare.  God gives Moses the design of the Tabernacle and Moses is able to bring together the workers to complete the Tabernacle.  

The clip art at the top is the positioning of the 12 Tribes and their location around the camp.  The campground probably covered some 12-14 acres. Not sure of a group's placement in a certain location or direction, but they have been commissioned to take land for which they must fight to possess. So at every point, they must be battle-ready. I was intrigued to see that each group  had a standard which marked the division, and a banner which marked each tribal family.  I come to the book of Numbers, and Moses must take a census of the group with some 603,559 men of 20+ years of age, plus wives and children which could have been a total number of some 3,000,000 people. Also this does not take in account  the tribe of Levi which is the priestly tribe.   God's orderliness is shown in the positioning of each tribe, in the laws given to them, and the exact numbering from the census.  In my reading about the Tribes, it is suggested that each tribe is positioned in relation to the Tabernacle "where God made His presence known" and that the order is after "His heavenly pattern".   

I understand that God has given to you and me as Christ followers the Indwelling Holy Spirit who has gifted us with the fruit of self-discipline/order in our personal lives.  With disorder, it seems that unruliness and dis- ease/lack of peace move in to take control over the hot messes I create.  1 Timothy 1:6, "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity/fear, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline."  Hot messes have a tendency to EXACERBATE and grow ginormously for they have no boundaries which say, "ENOUGH!"  Today, Holy Spirit of God, I yield to Your order, please control my day to Your glory. Alert my heart and mind to be battle-ready to resist the taunts of the evil one and my own flesh.  Forever leaning.  In process.  #IHAVETHREESONS.