#judeans

By Martin Moran

"What have the Romans ever done for us?” asks John Cleese as Reg of the People’s Front of Judea in the Monty Python comedy The Life of Brian. Among the references to roads, aqueducts and sanitation, one foot soldier grudgingly cites wine. You may be disappointed to hear, however, that the Pythons employed some artistic licence on that score, as the Judeans were making wine thousands of years before the Roman empire."

"We suspect winemaking began in the Caucasus, in Armenia and Georgia, 8,000 years ago. It then spread south through Turkey, Syria and Lebanon, and on to the rest of the Mediterranean basin, aided by the Phoenicians, who were based in what is now Lebanon, from about 1,500BC. In the Old Testament, Noah plants a vineyard soon after leaving the ark."

"If the soldiers of the People’s Front of Judea drank wine, it would probably have been local, from the Judean Hills. I would imagine that Pontius Pilate, the governor of the Roman province of Judea, would have supplemented the local wine with some of Rome’s finest."

by Aiden Wilson Tozer

I think we make two mistakes in our attitude toward our Christian leaders, one in not being sufficiently grateful to them and the other in following them too slavishly.

The first is a sin of omission, and because it is something that is not there it is not so likely to be noticed as a sin that is plainly present. For instance, it is a sin to be ungrateful to a man who has befriended us, but it is not as bad or as obvious a sin as stealing his pocketbook.

To be grateful to God's servants is to be grateful to God. The benefits we receive from them result from God's working through them, but as free agents they could have refused to cooperate. That they cheerfully yielded their members to the Spirit for our good puts us under continual obligation to them. Because they are so many, and because the vast majority of them have long fallen asleep we cannot make a like return to them in person; the only way we can discharge our obligation is to be thankful. Gratitude is an offering precious in the sight of God, and it is one that the poorest of us can make and be not poorer but richer for having made it.