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This was an interesting biography a book of two parts, firstly it took the story of 9th Century BC Elijah and brought it up to the present filling in a lot of the gaps that the text in Kings does not have. He highlight how Elijah was a spearhead of God's new and unexpected initiative to the kingdom of Israel. In his role Elijah was one of the greatest prophets.
Secondly Lance goes on to discuss how the story is relevant to us today, all the more poignant as the book was written in 1989. A good thought provoking book as book 48 - week 37 – fiction 42 (11 on audio) non fiction 6
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This is part 6 (not all the steps have blog entries against them) of my blog recording the count down to setting up my own business. With any project it is good to have a set of milestones, and these blog entries record some of these milestones
Number 1 – It is probably a good idea to have a different bank for ones business to that which you use for your home banking. It makes it easier to differentiate between them both for you and for the bank. Form comments made some banks seem much worse than others at this Number 2 – It is a good idea to have a bank that has a real person, who you can talk to across a table as your business advisor, not just a random person at the end of the phone.  Padlock Number 3 – Bank charges – different banks charge varying amounts for different things, and it is good to try and choose one that will give you an account that minimises these charges. Ideally you will have already worked out where your sales are coming from and how the sales will be made as part of the business plan so you can work out how the money is going to come in and in what form. Put this into a simple spreadsheet along with the potential charges and see what comes out. You may be surprised at the result. Over the medium term say 5 years an account with low charges but a short free period may well work out less than an account with slightly longer free period but steeper charges. The thing to check is that you are not locked in and cannot escape.  Supporting Link Number 4 – Location and opening times of nearest branch – Yes you can do lots over the phone and via the internet, but sometime you will need to go into a branch (putting cheques into an envelope and putting it into the post does not seem the most reliable way of handling income)
Number 5 – Your view on how it has behaved with regard to the banking crisis over the last few years. (Maybe you think this is not relevant, but another way of looking at it is the ethics of the bank) So having done all these things, the next thing to do is to draw up a short list, and visit them. It does no harm in visiting your personal bank and asking them what they will offer. You will have to tell them anyway that you are starting out in business and you can then use their offering as a reference point and all other ones should be better than that. All in all this process took us about a month, but once we had found an account that we liked and signed all the relevant bits of paper, amazingly the account is up and running within the 5 working days promised. Hopefully over time the bank we have chosen will act as a support to our business, and perform better than expected. This is book five in the Conqueror series, about the Dynasty of Genghis Khan, during the latter half of the thirteenth century. It continues the saga of the great family, and how they ruled a very significant part of the world during this time.
The text is beautifully written painting pictures of what life was like as a Mongol warrior during this time as they rode thousands of miles from one side of their known world to another. The plot line is all about the brothers in competition with each other, a scheming mother, murder and double crossing. - Civil war. My only grip was that there was a family tree at the start of the book which was very helpful in putting the characters in context, but it also allowed one to work out the outcome of the various struggles between brothers, as it gave the dates of their deaths and marked who was the Khan at that time. Still that did not really spoil a very well written story. The numbers of warriors and horses involved were staggering, especially as it is a story told around historical fact. To recall just one he sites the siege and fall of Baghdad by Hulegu. Here over 800,000 of the population were killed. The ruler of Baghdad the Caliph had a harem of 700 women. Compared to our lives now this is all very hard to comprehend, and the way the story is told brings it all to life. It is a shame that this is the last of the series. I look forward to the next one coming out but as I have not read Conn's earlier series on life with the Romans I will have to look that out and put it on my future reading list. Elijah is an amazing character recorded in the Old Testament of the Bible. He lived during King Ahab's reign in the 9th Century. Elijah bursts onto the seen in 1 Kings 17 and confronts King Ahab telling him that there is going to be a drought until he says it will stop. King Ahab is recorded as “doing more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him.”in 1 Kings 16 v30 and had certainly led the country astray.
Having told King Ahab the bad news about the drought, Elijah flees for his life, as King Ahab and his wife Queen Jezebel had a tenancy to kill those they did not like especially any true prophets who were challenging their beliefs. The drought begins to take hold. Elijah in his hiding is then miraculously fed by ravens, bringing him food, but after a time the brook that he is using for drinking water runs dry, so he needs to up sticks. God tells him to go to Zarephath which was around 100 miles away from where he was, so it was no walk in the park. He there meets a widow, who he asks for food. She feeds him with her last meal, thinking that she will then die, but again a miracle happens and her food supply does not run out while Elijah is living with her. Time moves on a bit and the widow's son sadly dies, but amazingly God brings him back to life, through Elijah. This is just a brief summary of our first encounter with Elijah, more can be read in the notes from the study here |
Tim Fuller
Dyslexic doodles on photography, food (growing, cooking & of course eating), faith and other fascinating things. This is a personal blog expressing my views. Archives
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