My mornings are running short, again. Here’s my response to a post by Skip Moen. Can you sense my frustration? I want to be obedient, and I want to figure out the Truth, as opposed to tradition. I don’t even know where to start. Even when it comes to reading the Bible, right now I don’t know where to read. It’s an aimless wandering, and that bothers me. The wilderness is SO huge, and I feel lost in it. Skip’s post: Identification Marks My response: I think a lot of us are in that place where the Messiah has overthrown our entrenched beliefs. This leaves us (me, at least) staggering, trying to rethink, relearn, realize the Truth (as opposed to the traditions that have been created, that we have grown up with since childhood). Yesterday I sat in church (yes, I still go) and compared the sermon (all about giving generously and God’s blessing for believers) with Skip’s post (about how believers are punished to bring them into alignment with the family requirements and how being a Christ-follower isn’t all roses and cash prizes – okay, that was my interpretation). There are some times when I enjoy what is said and it does come relatively close to the things I’m learning. And then there are times when I laugh and think, “How can you cherry pick which parts of the Old Testament count?” I grew up a missionary kid, so those entrenched beliefs were driven in deep… and pulling them up by the roots is a tough job. The question is, when the bed is clean and the soil ready, what is the Truth to be planted? And how does the garden grow properly so it becomes the beautiful thing it was meant to be? I think a lot of us are in that place where the Messiah has overthrown our entrenched beliefs. This leaves us (me, at least) staggering, trying to rethink, relearn, realize the Truth (as opposed to the traditions that have been created, that we have grown up with since childhood). Yesterday I sat in church (yes, I still go) and compared the sermon (all about giving generously and God’s blessing for believers) with Skip’s post (about how believers are punished to bring them into alignment with the family requirements and how being a Christ-follower isn’t all roses and cash prizes – okay, that was my interpretation). There are some times when I enjoy what is said and it does come relatively close to the things I’m learning. And then there are times when I laugh and think, “How can you cherry pick which parts of the Old Testament count?” I grew up a missionary kid, so those entrenched beliefs were driven in deep… and pulling them up by the roots is a tough job. The question is, when the bed is clean and the soil ready, what is the Truth to be planted? And how does the garden grow properly so it becomes the beautiful thing it was meant to be?
My desires don’t include a Lamborghini (in fact, I really don’t even know how to spell it – I looked it up), but today they include not being sick (summer cold all weekend – yuck), healing for my son with autism (or perhaps just that he would learn to speak clearly), and enough financial blessing that we can afford a place of our own in which to live without wondering if we can afford to put food on the table. Yet, He is Holy. He knows my desires. He knows the ultimate “goodness” of my desires, how good they are for me and for Him. He knows me. Part of the journey (for me, at least) is learning to trust His knowledge, trust His faithfulness, and trust His love. The article by Skip Moen today says it beautifully. Check it out.
This was a post I read today that really caught my attention and made me think about the way that I read and interpret. Am I awed and amazed at YHWH and why He does things? Or am I stuck in the “how?” Click here to read the post. Also, read the first post by Gayle about a slightly different view of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of Isaac. It’s very cool!
Hurry, hurry, hurry! My mornings are insane! I leave for work at 6am, which has cut my time in the morning in half. I feel like most of the time I’m posting things from my devotional readings at Skip Moen’s site. Sigh. Sorry! This morning the post I read asked a question about knowing God. Well, first it explained that knowing God isn’t about knowing Him in my head; it’s not doctrine. It’s about empathy. Do I feel His heart-wrenching pain over the betrayal and suffering of His beloved Israel? Do I feel His anguish over the prodigal children that have wandered from His protective care? Do I feel His agony as He allows punishment to come to the ones He loves? I’ve never thought of knowing God like that. And, sadly, if that is the measure by which I know God, then I don’t know Him much at all. I can’t comprehend His love for me, nor can I empathize with the way He feels about His people as a whole. I can in small ways, I suppose. But it’s not a regular occurrence. And, in some ways, it’s scary to think of what it would be like to truly feel as He feels. It would seem to be a gaping wound that refuses to heal. Perhaps that’s part of the fear of the Lord. To truly know Him would be brutal in some ways. But if I understand His sorrow and longing, then perhaps I can also understand His love. You can read Skip’s article, “Yada, Yada, Yada (pt 1)” here.
I wanted to put a link to Skip Moen’s post on Yom Kippur because it was so great! This is just a small snippet of what he wrote (and, oh, it was so convicting!): I need forgiveness for two kinds of sin. Both are related to trust. The first sin is to trust someone or something else in the place of God. When I ultimately rely on someone or something other than the Lord, I replace God with an idol. That idol might be as subtle as mood altering behavior or emotional escape. It might be as “harmless” as substituting study of the Word for conversation in prayer. It might be as benign as worrying about anticipated problems. This is the sin of substitution. It is idolatry. To trust the Lord is to put Him first and the act accordingly. No one can claim to rely on the Lord whose actions demonstrate other priorities. “All” means all. Trust is active reliance. When I rely on someone or something else, my sin is trusting the wrong god. The second sin reveals another facet of trust. It is the sin of not acting. To trust the Lord is to do what He asks. When I don’t do what He asks, even if I don’t replace Him with an idol, I am still guilty. Inaction violates the commandment just as much as action in the wrong direction. When I withhold my commitment by not acting, I demonstrate a lack of trust. This is perhaps an even more dangerous form of unfaithfulness for it is so easily rationalized. God whispers to me. I am reminded of His will in some slight way. Perhaps I am reminded that I made a promise to pray about someone’s need or that I determined to alter some habit, but when the time came to do so, I put it off. Who would know? It was a private commitment. God’s prompting is private. It is so easily dismissed in the hurry of my life. But trust is an inconvenient verb. Delaying response is a sign of unfaithfulness. The Hebrew expression is “Here I am,” not “I’ll be right back.”
Genesis 2:18 And the LORD God said, [It is] not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. I have felt recently that I haven’t done a very good job as a wife. I have no idea what I’m doing sometimes as a mom, but I think my ability to be a wife is the bigger issue. My sometimes thoughtless ways have hurt him, even though it wasn’t intentional, and my busy-ness has sometimes bordered on selfishness. I have a hard time stopping what I’m doing to focus on him. Anyway, I wanted to look at how God sees my role, so that’s probably what I’ll do for the next few days. Starting with the basics, I return to my creation. God calls Havah (she’s not really named “Eve”) the “ezer kenegdo” for Adam. The only other ezer in the Bible is God, himself. That doesn’t mean that she was god-like. It means that her purpose is similar to that of God’s – protection, strength, and sometimes conflict. The following is an article from “God’s Word to Women” about what this title means. Word Study EZER KENEGDO Usages of ‘ezer in the Old Testament show that in most cases God is an ‘ezer to human beings, which calls to question if the word “helper” is a valid interpretation of ‘ezer in any instance it is used. “Evidence indicates that the word ‘ezer originally had two roots, each beginning with different guttural sounds. One meant “power” and the other “strength.” As time passed, the two guttural sounds merged, but the meanings remained the same. The article below by William Sulik explains this point quite well. He references R. David Freedman and Biblical Archaeology Review 9 [1983]: 56-58). “She was to be his “helper”–at least that is how most of the translations have interpreted this word. A sample of the translations reads as follows: ‘I shall make a helper fit for him’ (RSV); ‘I will make a fitting helper for him’ (New Jewish Publication Society); ‘I will make an aid fit for him’ (AB); ‘I will make him a helpmate’ (JB); ‘I will make a suitable partner for him’ (NAB); ‘I will make him a helper comparable to him’ (NKJV). However, the customary translation of the two words `ezer kenegdo as “helper fit is almost certainly wrong. Recently R. David Freedman has pointed out that the Hebrew word ezer is a combination of two roots: `-z-r, meaning “to rescue, to save,” and g-z-r, meaning “to be strong.” The difference between the two is the first letter in Hebrew. Today that letter is silent in Hebrew; but in ancient times, it was a guttural sound formed in the back of the throat. The “g” was a ghayyin, and it came to use the same Hebrew symbol as the other sound, `ayin. But the fact that they were pronounced differently is clear from such place names which preserve the “g” sound, such as Gaza or Gomorrah. Some Semitic languages distinguished between these two signs and others did not. For example, Ugaritic did make a distinction between the `ayin and theghayyin; Hebrew did not. (R. David Freedman, “Woman, a Power Equal to a Man,” Biblical Archaeology Review 9 [1983]: 56-58). It would appear that sometime around 1500 B.C., these two signs began to be represented by one sign in Phoenician. Consequently, the two “phonemes” merged into one “grapheme.” What had been two different roots merged into one, much as in English the one word “fast” can refer to a person’s speed, abstinence from food, his or her slyness in a “fast deal,” or the adamant way in which someone holds “fast” to positions. The noun `ezer occurs twenty-one times in the Old Testament. In many of the passages, it is used in parallelism to words that clearly denote strength or power. Some examples are: ”There is none like the God of Jeshurun, The Rider of the Heavens in your strength (`-z-r), and on the clouds in his majesty.” (Deut. 33:26, [author's] translation) “Blessed are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is the shield of your strength (`-z-r) and the sword of your majesty.” (Deut. 33:29, [author's] translation) The case that begins to build is that we can be sure that `ezer means “strength” or “power” whenever it is used in parallelism with words for majesty or other words for power such as `oz or `uzzo. In fact, the presence of two names for one king, Azariah and Uzziah, both referring to God’s strength, makes it abundantly clear that the root `ezer meaning “strength” was known in Hebrew. Therefore, could we conclude that Genesis 2:18 be translated as “I will make a power [or strength] corresponding to man.” Freedman even suggests on the basis of later Hebrew that the second word in the Hebrew expression found in this verse should be rendered equal to him. If so, then God makes for the man a woman fully his equal and fully his match. In this way, the man’s loneliness will be assuaged. The same line of reasoning occurs with the apostle Paul, who urged in 1 Corinthians 11:10, “For this reason, a woman must have power [or authority] on her head [that is to say, invested in her].” This line of reasoning, which stresses full equality, is continued in Genesis 2:23 where Adam says of Eve, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” The idiomatic sense of this phrase “bone of my bones” is a “very close relative” to “one of us” or in effect “our equal.” The woman was never meant to be an assistant or “helpmate” to the man. The word “mate” slipped into English since it was so close to the Old English word “meet,” which means “fit to” or “corresponding to” the man which comes from the phrase that likely means “equal to.” What God had intended, then, was to make a “power” or “strength” for the man who would in every way “correspond to him” or even “be his equal.”” The Torah Study for Reform Jews says, “From the time of creation, relationships between spouses have at times been adversarial. In Genesis 2:18, God calls woman an ezer kenegdo, a “helper against him.” The great commentator Rashi takes the term literally to make a wonderful point: “If he [Adam] is worthy, [she will be] a help [ezer]. If he is not worthy [she will be] against him [kenegdo] for strife.” This Jewish study also described man and woman facing each other with arms raised holding an arch between them, giving a beautiful picture of equal responsibility. Another great resource is Skip Moen’s website. Here are three great articles: 1. Double Prepositional-ism 2. The Great Risk 3. A Special Kind of Help There’s more… later!
We so often talk about God knowing everything in advance, exactly what will happen and when, but we often don’t follow that to its logical (or rather not-so-logical) conclusion: if God is never wrong and He knows everything I will do in advance, then I have no choice because if I were to choose then I might choose differently and then He’d be wrong. Also, if He knows it already, it must be true, it must happen, or He is wrong. We had this discussion a while ago. I think of God’s knowledge of me as me walking on a branch of a tree. Every choice takes me to a new branch in an ever-expanding tree. God sees the entire tree, all the branches, even the ones I don’t walk down. It’s much easier to see than to explain. Anyhow, this post (read it here) is really interesting and it also sparked a rather interesting (and sometimes, heated) debate! Check it out!