10000 Years Of Longing Movie

[Jeana Rodia]

Psalm103 is a great picture of worship that is cultivation of the soul. The psalmist, perhaps David, is working on the garden of his heart, calling his own being to worship. He is not manufacturing anything artificial, but rather he is doing what he must to clear out the mess and see the beauty of the Lord again.

Verses 1-5 are written by the psalmist to his own soul. He is calling his own heart to worship the Lord, bringing blessing to the One who is the author of blessings. In these first few verses, the author brings to remembrance all that God has done in his own life. Forgiveness of sin, healing, redemption, faithful love, and true satisfaction have come from the Lord. These wonderful acts of God have brought life to this author, renewing his youth and making his soul soar like an eagle.

With this picture, the psalmist calls on the whole of creation to worship God just like his soul. Angels, all His servants, and everything God has made will bless the Lord because of Who He is and what He has done.

Psalm 103 is so beautiful, because it is a song that we still sing today. The truths that the author writes about are true for us today as well! God has done so much for us, and He is still doing so much! Everyday, all around us, the Lord is working in so many ways that we do not even see them all.

The third and final verse is a beautiful picture of looking back at life but also looking forward to the life yet to come. Praise for the Lord has only just begun, for everything our heart is longing for is just ahead. For ten thousand years we will be with God, and that is just the beginning. During that time, no sin or darkness will be between those who belong to the Lord.

May our worship cultivate our souls towards God. And may our worship lead our lives to live for Him. One final question for us to consider, is God calling you to something? As you spend time calling your heart to worship, let the Holy Spirit speak as well. What is He saying to you?

Millions of years ago, humanoid creatures descended from the trees in Africa. Thesefirst men stood erect, their eyes peering into the beyond, their hands graspingrudimentary weapons and tools, ready to bend nature to their will.

The descendants of these first men wandered into almost every corner of the earth andevolved into four main racial groups: the Negroids, Australoids, Mongoloids, andCaucasoids. Each race, living under different climatic conditions and in virtual isolationfrom one another, developed special physical characteristics to enable them to survive intheir particular part of the world. Along with these physical traits there emergedrudimentary cultures as distinct as the colors of their skins. Some communities reliedprimarily on hunting for survival, refining their skills and weapons through the ages tocapture prey and eventually to conquer and enslave rival communities. Others subsequentlydiscovered that the seeds and leaves of certain plants would appease hunger and sustainlife. Once they became farmers, men gave up their spears and knives for plowshares andpermanent settlements came into being.

The earliest civilizations sprouted along the banks of great rivers - the Hwang-Ho inChina, the Indus in India, the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia (where biblicalscholars have sought in vain for traces of the Garden of Eden), and the Nile in Egypt. Thesoil along these riverbanks was particularly suited for agriculture, being rich and deepand invigorated annually by new deposits of silt.

Whether they remained hunters or became farmers, the people who lived long before thewritten word was invented, discovered through trial and error the best materials forshaping, molding, bending, twisting, and sharpening objects into tools. In eachcivilization these discoveries were much the same; the only differences were the materialsat hand.

On the basis of artefacts and the history of China in its later years, archaeologistsnow assure us that hemp has been a familiar agricultural crop in China from the remotebeginnings of settlement in that part of the world down to our own time. When the Chinesewent about testing materials in their environment for suitability as tools, they mostcertainly would have looked into the possibility of using hemp whenever they required somekind of fiber.

The earliest record of man's use of cannabis comes from the island of Taiwan locatedoff the coast of mainland China. In this densely populated part of the world,archaeologists have unearthed an ancient village site dating back over 10,000 years to theStone Age.

Scattered among the trash and debris from this prehistoric community were some brokenpieces of pottery the sides of which had been decorated by pressing strips of cord intothe wet clay before it hardened. Also dispersed among the pottery fragments were someelongated rod-shaped tools, very similar in appearance to those later used to loosencannabis fibers from their stems.[1] These simple pots, with their patterns of twistedfiber embedded in their sides, suggest that men have been using the marijuana plant insome manner since the dawn of history.

The discovery that twisted strands of fiber were much stronger than individual strandswas followed by developments in the arts of spinning and weaving fibers into fabric -innovations that ended man's reliance on animal skins for clothing. Here, too, it was hempfiber that the Chinese chose for their first homespun garments. So important a place didhemp fiber occupy in ancient Chinese culture that the Book of Rites (second centuryB.C.) ordained that out of respect for the dead, mourners should wear clothes made fromhemp fabric, a custom followed down to modern times.[2]

While traces of early Chinese fabrics have all but disappeared, in 1972 an ancientburial site dating back to the Chou dynasty (1122-249 B.C.) was discovered. In it werefragments of cloth, some bronze containers, weapons, and pieces of jade. Inspection of thecloth showed it to be made of hemp, making this the oldest preserved specimen of hemp inexistence.[3]

The ancient Chinese not only wove their clothes from hemp, they also used the sturdyfiber to manufacture shoes. In fact, hemp was so highly regarded by the Chinese that theycalled their country the "land of mulberry and hemp".

The mulberry plant was venerated because it was the food upon which silkworms fed, andsilk was one of China's most important products. But silk was very expensive and only thevery wealthy could afford silken fabric. For the vast millions of less fortunate, cheapermaterial had to be found. Such material was typically hemp.

Ancient Chinese manuscripts are filled with passages urging the people to plant hemp sothat they will have clothes.[4] A book of ancient poetry mentions the spinning of hempenthreads by a young girl.[5] The Shu King, a book which dates back to about 2350B.C., says that in the province of Shantung the soil was "whitish and rich...withsilk, hemp, lead, pine trees and strange stones..." and that hemp was among thearticles of tribute extorted from inhabitants of the valley of the Honan.[6]

During the ninth century B.C., "female man-barbarians," an Amazon-likedynasty of female warriors from Indochina, offered the Chinese emperor a "luminoussunset-clouds brocade" fashioned from hemp, as tribute. According to the courttranscriber, it was "shining and radiant, infecting men with its sweet smellingaroma. With this, and the intermingling of the five colors in it, it was more ravishinglybeautiful than the brocades of our central states."[7]

Ma, the Chinese word for hemp, is composed of two symbols which are meant todepict hemp. The part beneath and to the right of the straight lines represent hemp fibersdangling from a rack. The horizontal and vertical lines represent the home in which theywere drying.

As they became more familiar with the plant, the Chinese discovered it was dioecious.Male plants were then clearly distinguished from females by name (hsi for the male,chu for the female). The Chinese also recognised that the male plants produced abetter fiber than the female, whereas the female produced the better seeds.[8] (Althoughhemp seed was a major grain crop in ancient China until the sixth century A.D.,[9] it wasnot as important a food grain as rice or mullet.[10])

Hemp fiber was also once a factor in the wars waged by Chinese land barons. Initially,Chinese archers fashioned their bowstrings from bamboo fibers. When hemp's greaterstrength and durability were discovered, bamboo strings were replaced with those made fromhemp. Equipped with these superior bowstrings, archers could send their arrows further andwith greater force. Enemy archers, whose weapons were made from inferior bamboo, were at aconsiderable disadvantage. With ineffectual archers, armies were vulnerable to attack atdistances from which they could not effectively return the hail of deadly missiles thatrained upon them. So important was the hemp bowstring that Chinese monarchs of old setaside large portions of land exclusively for hemp, the first agricultural war crop.[11]

In fact, every canton in ancient China grew hemp. Typically, each canton tried to beself-sufficient and grow everything it needed to support its own needs. When it couldn'traise something itself, it grew crops or manufactured materials that it could trade foressential goods. Accordingly, crops were planted around homes not only because of thesuitability of the land, but also because of their commercial value. The closer to thehome, the greater a crop's value.

Because food was essential, millet and rice were grown wherever land and water wereavailable. Next came vegetable gardens and orchards, and beyond them the textile plants,chiefly hemp.[12] Next came the cereals and vegetables.

After the hemp was harvested by the men, the women, who were the weavers, manufacturedclothes from the fibers for the family. After the family's needs were satisfied, othergarments were produced for sale. To support their families, weaving began in autumn andlasted all winter.[13]

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