Muxworthy's Musings

  Introduction. Before I go any further let us first look at some of the names that we find in this passage:   First of all we have the Canaanite city of Ai (pronounced Ay-eye) the probable meaning of this is  ‘The Ruin’ which it later became. Secondly, we have Beth-Aven meaning house of idols/nothingness/iniquity/trouble. Now we come to Achan which again probably meant trouble, which is also the probable meaning of the Valley of Achor. So, as you can see there is an awful lot of trouble in this passage, and this was to be the case for the children of Israel and ultimately Achan. Following the destruction of Jericho, God forbade Israel to take anything whatsoever from that city for themselves. However, Achan thinks that this either doesn’t apply to him or he thinks that with all this loot lying around it won’t be missed. It’s funny how human nature never changes as we often reflect in the UK of the great community spirit that existed during the Blitz of 1940/41, wha...

Have you ever looked through a keyhole to see what is on the other side of a locked door? Some years ago, I was with a friend going around what is left of Swindon railway works. As some of you might know it was closed in 1986 with part of it being converted into a shopping outlet whilst another part now houses the Steam Museum. We came to one of the buildings that was separate from both the shops and the museum, but it had at some time been part of the old works as there were still rails going up to a big door. Naturally we were interested in what the building had been and more importantly what it was now being used for. It wasn’t long until we spied a keyhole to look through. The sight that met us was quite unexpected, it was filled with all sorts of old railway vans and wagons and other bit of old railway equipment that in some cases dated back to before World War Two. To this day I have no idea who it belonged to, but one thing was for sure we would have both dearly loved to have ...

The conversation went like this:  Customer:  ‘Can you help me; do you have any cantaloupe melons?’ Assistant:  ‘I’ll just check our stock to see if we have any.’ The assistant checked their electronic handset. ‘I’m sorry but we won’t have any until tomorrow morning.’  The reaction from the customer was not what the assistant expected. In fact the reaction was on a par with receiving news that a loved one had died. It wasn’t as though there weren’t any other varieties of melon available (there were several to say the least). No, it had to be cantaloupe and it had to be available now!  Yes, I was that assistant and other than the usual customer service bit; there was little else I could do. This left my mind to wander (not a good thing at the best of times). Were their family being held at gunpoint with the kidnappers demanding provision of a myriad of exotic fruit of which this melon was just one, in exchange for their liberty? Were they going to suffer unspeakab...