Sympathy for Ham...

What a curious title!! All will be revealed... Oh dear, therein lies a hideous pun - you will figure it out later (cf. Noah)! Not intended...

Right, now it is lent and when I was praying about what to give up, I was challenged a little by the superficiality of some of the things that I usually give up, such as chocolate (useful detox), TV (well, I don't watch much anyway) etc etc. I couldn't really think of one particular thing that I would genuinely honour the Lord by giving up, as I had to consider that if I gave up some small luxury, would I really be spending the time that is usually dedicated to this in prayer? Probably not if I am honest.

The only thing that came to mind was not to give something up, but to do something instead, as if I am not going to remember to spend 'chocolate time' praying (all 30 seconds of it!), then praying and reading the Bible must be where I am lacking... JT is really good at explaining the Bible stories to me and he knows exactly what happened, why, when, how, context etc etc. I can spout verses, but I struggle with the progression of events, what book things are from, order, etc. I felt that I should try to read a book of the Bible each day, starting with Genesis. By the end of lent I would have read 40 books!! Well that was a nice idea yesterday... I am now on chapter 11 of Genesis and have remembered, to my dismay, quite how long the books of the Bible are!! Well, I will see what I can do - maybe I will get through a few books.

Anyway, that said, I have just been reading about an inetersting little incident with Noah, since he is 'man of the moment'. apparently he went out on the razz one night and got very drunk. He fell asleep in his tent naked, where he was discovered by his son Ham (why was he called Ham when Jews didn't eat pork?!? Hmmm... Lost in translation!! I'm sure Ham doesn't mean 'Ham' in Hebrew) Anyway, Ham tells his brothers and they reverse into the tent and throw a robe on their Dad, so as not to see him naked. When Noah wakes up and discovers that Ham has given the game away, he curses his son! This seems a bit harsh?! Yet he blesses the other sons for covering up his indecency!!

Now maybe this is because Ham told tales when he could have retained Noah's dignity and just covered him up himself, but for starters it wasn't Ham's son Canaan's fault (and he gets cursed) and secondly it is Noah who has disgraced himself in the first place!! Does anyone know what is going on here? I felt a bit sorry for poor old Ham.