Tag: godsoakedworld

Friday, March 17 – 2 Chronicles 20:5-23

⁵ Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, before the new court, ⁶ and said, “O Lord, God of our ancestors, are you not God in heaven? Do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations? In your hand are power and might, so that no one is able to withstand you. ⁷ Did you not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of your friend Abraham? ⁸ They have lived in it, and in it have built you a sanctuary for your name, saying, ⁹ ‘If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house, and before you, for your name is in this house, and cry to you in our distress, and you will hear and save.’ ¹⁰ See now, the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy— ¹¹ they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession that you have given us to inherit. ¹² O our God, will you not execute judgment upon them? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

¹³ Meanwhile all Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children. ¹⁴ Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel son of Zechariah, son of Benaiah, son of Jeiel, son of Mattaniah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph, in the middle of the assembly. ¹⁵ He said, “Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the Lord to you: ‘Do not fear or be dismayed at this great multitude; for the battle is not yours but God’s. ¹⁶ Tomorrow go down against them; they will come up by the ascent of Ziz; you will find them at the end of the valley, before the wilderness of Jeruel. ¹⁷ This battle is not for you to fight; take your position, stand still, and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.”

¹⁸ Then Jehoshaphat bowed down with his face to the ground, and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell down before the Lord, worshiping the Lord. ¹⁹ And the Levites, of the Kohathites and the Korahites, stood up to praise the Lord, the God of Israel, with a very loud voice.

²⁰ They rose early in the morning and went out into the wilderness of Tekoa; and as they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Listen to me, O Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem! Believe in the Lord your God and you will be established; believe his prophets.” ²¹ When he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the Lord and praise him in holy splendor, as they went before the army, saying,

“Give thanks to the Lord,
for his steadfast love endures forever.”

²² As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush against the Ammonites, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were routed. ²³ For the Ammonites and Moab attacked the inhabitants of Mount Seir, destroying them utterly; and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they all helped to destroy one another.

Points of Interest:

• Jehoshaphat is a contemporary of Ahab and Jezebel in the 9^th century B.C. Jehoshaphat ruled the southern kingdom of Judah. Judah’s capital city was Jerusalem, the city of the great temple built under King Solomon. Judah’s very existence is threatened by foreign armies, and in his prayer, Jehoshaphat refers to this temple as symbolizing God’s protective presence.
• Jehoshaphat begins his prayer by asking God, “Are you not in heaven?” Perhaps this is a rhetorical question and a mark of faith, reminding himself that of course God is present and listening and ready to help. Or perhaps this is a prayer of doubt, asking God, “Aren’t you there?” Perhaps Jehoshaphat is reminding God of what God has promised. Prayer can rise from both faith and doubt and serves to remind both God and ourselves what we know, believe, and hope to be true of God.
• Jehoshaphat speaks the un-defensive, unvarnished truth of his dilemma: “We do not know what to do.” He doesn’t pretty up – either for God or for his watching subordinates – how stuck he is. He simply says to God, “We are powerless, but we are watching. We are waiting for you, God.”
• Then they wait. And wait. And then God speaks, through somebody else. This no-name priest isn’t a person of particular prominence, but in giving his whole family lineage, I think the narrator suggests both the historicity of this event and also how much this person Jahaziel is known to God.
• Jahaziel’s message isn’t tactical. There’s no solution in it. He says that God is with them, and that is good enough. They have nothing to fear.
• The warfare of this passage is likely distracting to us. Does God really take sides in competitions, be they sporting events or actual wars? My own theology lends me to tend to say, “No.” But it is undeniable that the ancients, including Israel, tended to see God as backing a particular people and nation’s welfare. So victory in war was a sign of God’s presence and strength. However imperfect, this is the theological landscape this story drops us into.
• The unusual method of warfare Jehoshaphat and followers embrace seems more timeless. Knowing they are outmatched on human terms, they praise God. They sing and worship as protest. People with their backs against the wall have thanked and praised God in the middle of their trials, not just for comfort, but for strength. Spoken and sung praise, individual and collective, is a way of aligning our hearts and our fate with a God who is both within and beyond the limits of our circumstances.
• I don’t know what to make of the unlikely ending, in which God himself ambushes the various opposing armies, so that they destroy themselves while Judah sings. In this particular case, faith and worship were the only acts of battle required.

Taking It Home:

• Spiritual Exercise – Tell God where you are powerless and need help and simply wait. Don’t try to make up an answer or solution. See if God sends a person or circumstance into your path over the next day to speak to you.
• Prayer for your six. – Pray that God provides miraculous help in any situation in which any of your six are stuck or embattled.

Thursday, March 16 – II Kings 4:1-7

4 Now the wife of a member of the company of prophets cried to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead; and you know that your servant feared the Lord, but a creditor has come to take my two children as slaves.” ² Elisha said to her, “What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?” She answered, “Your servant has nothing in the house, except a jar of oil.” ³ He said, “Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels and not just a few. ⁴ Then go in, and shut the door behind you and your children, and start pouring into all these vessels; when each is full, set it aside.” ⁵ So she left him and shut the door behind her and her children; they kept bringing vessels to her, and she kept pouring. ⁶ When the vessels were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” But he said to her, “There are no more.” Then the oil stopped flowing. ⁷ She came and told the man of God, and he said, “Go sell the oil and pay your debts, and you and your children can live on the rest.”

Points of Interest:

• Elijah’s similarly-named protégée Elisha is the best known of a class of a few dozen or more prophets. They are spiritual advisers to the monarchy and the nation as a whole. One of Elijah’s junior colleagues has died, and his widow is destitute.
• As is still true in many developing nations, the widow’s destitution leads to crippling debt which leads to the risk of child slavery. This link of hardship to debt to enslavement has been a curse of the earth’s poor for millennia.
• Elisha begins with what social workers call a strength-based approach. In the widow’s lack, he asks what she does have, which in this case is a single jar of oil. From there, she’s told to borrow more jars from her neighbors, as many empty jars as possible. So before she becomes more full, she is asked to become more desperate, and publicly so.
• The widow’s empty jars look like a physical mark of faith. Each empty jar she gathers represents hope that God will in some way fill that jar. The more empty jars, the more unlikely they’ll all be filled, but the more possibility for God to work wonders.
• As it turns out, the widow’s oil goes a lot further than she could have imagined. She kept pouring. There is more and more oil. Behind closed doors, she physically sees the provision and love of God in this oil. She kept pouring.
• When her jars are all full, the oil stopped flowing. The moment ends, but the miracle has just begun. The widow has enough oil to pay her debts and so rescue her children, and to provide for their needs, both on this day and into the future.

Taking It Home:

• Spiritual Exercise – Remember your deep desire of these 40 Days of Faith. Is it the deepest desire of your heart, or has any new longing emerged? Hold empty hands up, and speak your desire to a good and loving and attentive God. With your hands up, ask Jesus to reveal to you how they aren’t empty. What jar of oil do you have? What step of faith can you take today, as your part in the thing you are waiting for God to do? Ask God for courage to take that step this very day, even if it makes you look a little desperate. And ask God to meet you in that step of faith, fulfilling your desire.
• Prayer for your city – Remember in prayer the desperately poor in your city and in your world. Ask for them that God will provide an Elisha to turn to – a spiritually wise and creative comforter and adviser that will highlight whatever strength they have already and help them join with God in seeing that become enough. Pray that God will supply whatever miraculous help and provision is needed for them to survive both today and tomorrow.

Wednesday, March 15 – I Kings 19:1-18

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. ² Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” ³ Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there.

⁴ But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” ⁵ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” ⁶ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. ⁷ The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” ⁸ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. ⁹ At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” ¹⁰ He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”

¹¹ He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; ¹² and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. ¹³ When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” ¹⁴ He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” ¹⁵ Then the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. ¹⁶ Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. ¹⁷ Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. ¹⁸ Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”

Points of Interest:

• A couple hundred years after Samuel’s death, I Kings introduces us to the royal couple Ahab and Jezebel, and their chief adversary, Elijah. Ahab and Jezebel are violent tyrants who rule over Israel, the northern half of what used to be one nation, since split by tribal division. The couple also worships the local Canaanite fertility gods above the God of Abraham and Sarah, and Jacob, and Samuel, and on to Jesus. Elijah also has a violent streak in him, but he is loyal to the one true God and is deeply, publicly critical of Ahab and Jezebel’s rule. After a recent protest staged by Elijah, Jezebel puts a death threat on his life.
• Elijah had no clinicians available to diagnose him, but he exhibits signs of significant anxiety and serious depression. Fleeing for his life, he hides under a solitary tree, prays for his life to end, and falls asleep.
• We have angels – messengers of God – again. And before Elijah can experience God directly, he is given food and water and exercise and a pilgrimage to take to Horeb, the same place where Moses first saw the burning bush. God cares for Elijah’s body and restores hope in him before talking to him at all.
• God begins speaking to Elijah not with a command or a song, but with a question. What are you doing here? What do you want? Elijah speaks his truth to God – he is faithful, he thinks, but lonely and afraid.
• After all this, Elijah stands on a mountaintop and witnesses the kaleidoscopic range of nature’s wonders. But God is most present, perhaps only present, in the sheer silence that follows. God isn’t always in noise or power or spectacle, but in still wonder.
• After Elijah experiences God’s presence, he is ready for more. He senses God’s inquiry and speaks his truth again. And then God speaks God’s truth. Elijah is not alone – he has thousands of unseen partners and a younger person to mentor. And he needn’t be afraid – he has good and important work to do.
• Based on the narrative that follows, this seems to be enough to nudge Elijah out of his anxiety and depression-induced paralysis. Good food, exercise, hope, companionship, good work to do, and an assurance that God is with him – all of this gets him moving again.

Taking It Home:

• Spiritual Exercise – Ask yourself where you are in your own God-soaked 40-day journey? Does God have something to say to you today? Do you long to sense God’s presence in the sheer silence? Or are you just tired and empty, needing renewed hope? Consider eating a favorite food, drinking a favorite drink, exercising, or resting today and receiving it as God’s gift to you. Give it your mindful attention and enjoy this gift, thanking God for it. Ask God to build up your hope that you will meet God in this season.
• Prayer for your six – Ask God to refresh the bodies and minds of any of your six who are discouraged, anxious, lonely, or depressed. Pray that God will give them hope, and give them a sense of God’s transcendent presence sometime today.

Sunday, March 12 – Ruth 1:1-18

1 In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. ² The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. ³ But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. ⁴ These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. When they had lived there about ten years, ⁵ both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

⁶ Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had considered his people and given them food. ⁷ So she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah. ⁸ But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. ⁹ The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.” Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. ¹⁰ They said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” ¹¹ But Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? ¹² Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, ¹³ would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.” ¹⁴ Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.

¹⁵ So she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” ¹⁶ But Ruth said,

“Do not press me to leave you
or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
¹⁷ Where you die, I will die—
there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!”

¹⁸ When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.

Points of Interest:

• After the original stories involving Israel’s founding fathers (and mothers), there are a serious of historical books that trace the rise and fall of Israel’s political and spiritual life in the twelfth through fourth centuries B.C. Tucked into these books is the short account of Ruth, celebrated as the eventual great-grandmother of Israel’s greatest king, David.
• Ruth begins with a series of epic tragedies. Insecure economic conditions force a family of four to migrate to a foreign land, where both sons grow up to marry foreign women. Afterwards, the father dies, then both sons, leaving three widows alone, with no children. In the culture and economy of the Ancient Near East, childless widows were by definition destitute. The elder widow, Naomi, hears the economy back home has rebounded and plans to return, hoping to find help and mercy from her hometown relatives.
• Naomi reacts to tragedy with bitterness. She takes it as a sign that God has abandoned her. Orpah takes Naomi’s advice to start life over, abandoning both Ruth and Ruth’s god for a happier future elsewhere. Ruth, though, has hope in her circumstances despite all odds.
• Despite Naomi’s current bitterness, Ruth has seen something in Naomi and in Naomi’s God that draws out of her both love and loyalty. Ruth makes what the Ancient Near East would recognize as a covenant. It’s a solemn promise, at the level of seriousness and sacredness that we see in marriage vows. Something in Naomi’s or her late husband’s lives or in the stories they told about God has given Ruth optimism and hope that life will go well for her if she stays loyal to this God.

Spiritual Exercise: Faith can be nourished by experiencing God in another person. Think of someone you deeply love, respect, or otherwise admire. What do they seem to know about God that you would like to experience? Ask God to experience this yourself. What about God does this person reflect to you? Express directly to God that you love that God is the source of this goodness.

Prayer: Pray for your six, that they will see a winsome faith and a reflection of a beautiful and loving God in your words, actions, and stories.

 

Saturday, March 11 – Exodus 32:1-14

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” ² Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” ³ So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. ⁴ He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” ⁵ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” ⁶ They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.

⁷ The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; ⁸ they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” ⁹ The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. ¹⁰ Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”

¹¹ But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? ¹² Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. ¹³ Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’” ¹⁴ And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

Points of Interest:

• Years later, Moses has indeed led the Israelite underclass out of Egypt, and into the desert between there and Canaan. But wouldn’t you know it, change is hard? Exodus and the following books describe the ups and downs of a group of people trying to form a social identity and stay on mission even when distracted and delayed. This passage is one of many moments in that drama.
• Why in the world would people want Aaron to “make gods” for them? One, Moses has been gone for a while, up on a mountaintop praying to God on behalf of the people. The absence of leadership has made people anxious. Also, there’s an impulse to center their lives on something they can see and control, rather than a personal God they can’t control and can’t directly see. The scriptures call this called idolatry – looking for security and protection and identity in things we can control but don’t in the end bring us much security or protection. They argue this habit of people and cultures is a leading factor in human disappointment and misery.
• The particular from these people give to their idol is a young bull. Bulls and calves represented both strength and fertility in the Ancient Near East. They symbolized people’s hopes that the gods would make them strong and give them productive wombs and productive lands – in other words, wealth and security leading to happiness. We have one of these idols in America too – the golden statue of the bull by Wall Street! Perhaps there’s something revealing here. Like the ancients, we experience so much of life as anxious and out of control. As a result, more than the communion and centering that God offers, we long for strength, wealth, and success that we hope will immunize us against threat.

Perhaps this is a common human impulse, but God sees it as perverse – illogical, unhelpful, wrong-headed. Perhaps this is because unhealthy attachments reduce God, attach us to promises that can’t deliver, and thus compromise both God’s and our greatness.

• In Moses’ prayer, there’s what looks to us like a role reversal. God is angry, and Moses plays a calming role, reminding God of God’s promises to this people and of the stakes of this moment. So God lets go of his original thoughts of destruction, literally changing his mind.

We could see two different dynamics at play here. This isn’t the only time the Bible describe God as changing God’s mind in response to human petition. So that’s an indication of the enormous power prayer may have, particularly prayer that asks God to act consistent with the very best we know to be true of God.

On the other hand, this may also be the tradition’s way of describing Moses experiencing a deeper revelation of what God is like. When the Israelites’ faith goes astray, Moses expects God to respond like all the other gods they would have known – lashing out in anger. But Moses discovers the God they are coming to know as deeper, wiser, and more restrained.

Spiritual Exercise: Unhealthy attachments – what the Bible calls idolatry – reduce us and reduce our experience of God. Consider this short examination. Put two columns on a piece of paper. On the left, write down 3-5 things that make you experience greatest vulnerability or anxiety. To the right of each one, write down what you do most to distract yourself or what you trust most to make you secure or strong in the face of this challenge. As you look at the lists, ask if any of these strategies are unhealthy for you. If you like, invite the unseen God to give you faith that God can be your help and security in the face of these challenges.

Prayer: Ask God to help your church become more and more comfortable trusting an unseen God each time people experience vulnerability, uncertainty, and insecurity. Pray that people in your community will not use religion to pretend to be stronger than they are, but will trust in an unseen and strong God to be loving and helpful to them in their weakness.

Friday, March 10 – Exodus 3:1-12

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. ³ Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” ⁴ When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” ⁵ Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶ He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

⁷ Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸ and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ⁹ The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰ So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” ¹¹ But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” ¹² He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”

Points of Interest:

• Centuries after Jacob, his descendants settle in Egypt – first prospering but then falling into slavery under Egyptian oppression. Moses is introduced as a Hebrew orphan taken into the Pharoah’s own household until he rediscovers his ethnic identity, murders an Egyptian taskmaster, and flees to the wilderness. At this point in this story, Moses is a middle-aged husband and father, working as a shepherd in his father-in-law’s family business.
• Out in the desert, on a hot day, Moses has a visual hallucination of a burning bush. When he looks more closely, he then has an auditory hallucination as well. This significant encounter is a vivid example of a spiritual experience.

In his study of spiritual experiences, 19^th century American psychologist William James described four common qualities to these experiences reported across cultures and religions. They are:

• Transient – temporary, outside our ordinary experience of space and time,
• Ineffable – hard to fully capture in words
• Noetic – mentally engaging, teaching something valuable, and
• Passive – seeming to happen to us, beyond our control.

All of this is true for Moses. His attention is drawn away from his work, he experiences a deep and powerful sense of being with and communing with a God who has interrupted his thinking and living, and is given unique insight into God’s views on current affairs and Moses’ leadership call to intervene.

• By using the word “hallucination” and applying William James’ analysis, we aren’t saying Moses’ experience was imaginary or that God didn’t initiate it all. We’re simply introducing analytical language to describe what sometimes happens when we engage in a God-soaked world.
• In his experience with God, Moses experiences beauty and wonder (the unconsumed, flaming bush), holiness (a sense of something in God that is utterly “other” and transcendent), and fear (it’s overwhelming, almost too much to apprehend). All these sensations seem common to vivid encounters with God.
• Moses’ encounter also leaves him with a sense of calling, direction, and purpose. On the one hand, like Abram, Moses has a calling to do something very much in keeping with his life circumstances and history. He is a Hebrew child who intimately knows Egyptian culture and leadership – who better to negotiate the Israelite exodus out of Egypt and back to Canaan? On the other hand, Moses finds the task overwhelming. He is assured, though, that God will be with him in the task.

Spiritual Exercise: By definition, we can’t create spiritual experiences for ourselves, even if we want them. As William James writes, they are passive – received, not initiated, by us. Meditation and prayer, though, can increase our receptivity. Consider lighting a candle, and as you gaze into it, meditate on something you know to be true and good about God.  Perhaps meditate on “the God of compassion” emphasized in this passage, or on “the God who sees” from Tuesday’s story with Hagar.

After a few minutes, see if you perceive God’s presence with you in any way. Many of us have been helped in experiencing God’s presence by specifically speaking to Jesus, “How are you here with me in this moment? Help me to perceive your presence, and whatever you have to say.”

Consider writing down or telling someone whatever you experience during this time.

Prayer: Ask God to again call leaders to deliver people out of suffering in your city, country, or world. Pay attention if anything comes to mind that is within your experiences and resources to do.

Thursday, March 9 – Genesis 32:22-32

²² The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³ He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. ²⁴ Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. ²⁵ When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. ²⁶ Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” ²⁷ So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” ²⁸ Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” ²⁹ Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. ³⁰ So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” ³¹ The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. ³² Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket, because he struck Jacob on the hip socket at the thigh muscle.

Points of Interest:

• Isaac, Abraham’s son, has grown up and had children himself, two twins in fact. Isaac’s favorite, Esau, is the strong, silent type, but not very shrewd. Isaac’s wife’s favorite, Jacob, is far more clever and ambitious, but also highly manipulative in his patterns of achieving success. As a grown man, Jacob is – for his times – fabulously wealthy and also is now a patriarch of his own large, complicated, polygamous household. Where we pick up the story, Jacob hasn’t seen his angry, potentially vengeful brother, Esau, in many years but plans on meeting him the next day. He’s also alone at night for the first time in many years, in the darkness of Palestine’s pre-electricity, pitch black wilderness.
• Jacob is ambushed in the middle of the night. Options for who this might be: (a) Jacob’s angry brother Esau, attacking him before he can prepare to defend himself. Or (b) a bandit, come in the night to rob and kill him. Either way, this is bad news, and Jacob starts fighting.
• As the wrestling continues long into the night, and then – near dawn – Jacob’s opponent exerts suddenly massive strength and injures him, Jacob wonders if this is some kind of spiritual being he’s wrestling. Long night, polytheistic culture – who knows?
• Turns out Jacob is right. Jacob longs for blessing – positive words about his future that carry authority. You can read the back story yourself in Genesis if you like, but Jacob has been longing for this his whole life, as the only blessing his own father ever gave him was one he stole. It was meant for his brother, not for him.
• Jacob is blessed, and the blessing is a new name – Israel, which means “struggles with God”. Jacob’s good news is that God wants to know him and interact with him. This god is there to be Jacob’s object of worship and allegiance, but also to be Jacob’s – and by extension, his descendants’ – sparring partner over the most substantive matters of life.
• Names become very important in this passage. Jacob gets a new name that ties his story to God’s. Turns out this name will stick to all biological and spiritual descendants of Jacob – people who can struggle/wrestle with God, be blessed, and live. Jacob renames the spot of land where this happened “Peniel,” because he thinks he has seen the very face of God. The one name that’s not given is the mysterious nighttime wrestler/angel/god-figure. In ancient religions, naming was a way of gaining power over the one named, and it’s clear who maintains authority in this scene.
• As a reminder of the power imbalance in this encounter, Jacob leaves with a limp. Symbolically, he’s no longer an ambitious striver, hoping to know God and earnestly trying to prove himself in the world. Instead, he’s secure in his identity as loved and named by God, while accepting that his own mortal condition will always be conditional, weak, incomplete.

Spiritual Exercise: Reread this passage slowly, trying to imagine yourself as Jacob. How does it feel when you are attacked? What does this wrestling look and sound and smell like as it continues through the night? What do you think when you wonder if this is God? How does it feel that God insists you accept your own weakness? What is it like to be blessed, to be told you are known and that you can struggle with God and live to tell the tale?

After the reflection, ask if there’s any question or yearning you have to ask God over these 40 Days. Consider making that your prayer about what you want God to do for you. What would it feel like to “wrestle” with God over this prayer?

Prayer: Pray that God will attack, but then love, one of your six in the middle of the night this week. Should that not occur, or should that prove to be an uncomfortable prayer, ask that God will help one or all of your six speak frankly and honestly with God about their doubts, the struggles, or their questions.

Wednesday, March 8 – Genesis 22:1-19

After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” ² He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” ³ So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. ⁴ On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. ⁵ Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” ⁶ Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. ⁷ Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” ⁸ Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.

⁹ When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. ¹⁰ Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. ¹¹ But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” ¹² He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” ¹³ And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. ¹⁴ So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

¹⁵ The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, ¹⁶ and said, “By myself I have sworn, says the Lord: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, ¹⁷ I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, ¹⁸ and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.” ¹⁹ So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham lived at Beer-sheba.

Points of Interest:

• A number of things have happened since we left off with Abram, Sarai, and their dysfunctional household. In response to their ongoing spiritual life and sense of destiny, they have both altered their names somewhat, and are now called Abraham and Sarah. Hagar’s child Ishmael is all grown up, and Abraham and Sarah have had a miracle baby of their own, a son they named Isaac.
• I once studied this passage with a rabbi who found dark humor in the dialogue. When Abraham tells Isaac, “God will provide the lamb, my son,” we hear him at first simply addressing his teeage son. This rabbi joked that Abraham might have been indicating that Isaac is in fact the lamb God provided. That would have put a damper on their hiking conversation! This same rabbi speculated that Abraham returned later to a different city because he couldn’t bear to see his wife afterwards. That would be an awkward conversation – “Honey, what did you and our boy do today?”
• In all seriousness, this is a harrowing story. In the Jewish tradition, it’s referred to as the “binding of Isaac.” This is a story about a man who thinks God’s telling him to kill his only son and who gets as close as tying him down to a homemade altar before stopping. We’ll present two very different interpretations of this passage, and then run with the second interpretation for the sake of our own efforts to engage in a God-soaked world.
• The most traditional interpretation of this passage takes it at face value. Abraham has left his home and inheritance based on a word from God, waited over ten years for the promised child to come, and then God tests his faith one more time. In this understanding, Abraham senses God speaking accurately. Then in faith that God will bring Isaac back to life, or provide him with a substitute heir, or make it work out in some other way, he brings Isaac and a pile of wood up to a mountaintop. Very close to the murder, Abraham has a strong impulse to stop and attributes this impulse to a messenger from God, or perhaps he physically sees a vision of a person telling him to stop. He then sees a lamb caught in a bush and realizes God still wants a sacrifice, but will take an animal sacrifice instead. So he unties his son, kills the lamb, praises God, senses God’s praise for him and reaffirming of God’s promise, then heads back down the mountain, and calls it a day. A particularly Christian spin on this interpretation is to see the lamb in the bush as a foreshadowing of the eventual death of Jesus, who has been called – amongst other things – the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
• This traditional interpretation has some strengths but also a couple of major problems. It’s a pretty ugly and – for the Bible – very unusual view of God. Ancient Near Eastern residents understood their Canaanite fertility gods to demand child sacrifice to ensure further children and good harvests. But the Old Testament strongly condemns this practice and makes it clear that the God of Abraham, who people eventually believe to be the one, true God of the world, is not like this. Also, this scene is only mentioned twice in the New Testament, and never as a symbol for Jesus’ death.
• Since the Middle Ages, numerous other readings of this passage have been proposed. Here is one. Abraham may have thought that God was asking for a child sacrifice. After all, he’d experienced God speaking to him at sites of fertility-god worship, other gods in his region expected this, and perhaps his family god would require this sacrifice as well. Under this interpretation, Abraham is mistaken in his original sense of God speaking to him, but then accurately discerns God telling him to stop. In this understanding of the passage, Abraham is led by God’s spirit to a truer, healthier view of God – God who will bless Abraham and his descendants and would never demand the death of a human. Abraham is able to pass that knowledge on to his descendants, and child sacrifice is never again proposed by Abraham’s descendants, except when they disobey God to worship the false, destructive gods of neighboring cultures.

Spiritual Exercise: Name something you used to think about God that you no longer think is healthy or accurate. Ask God to continue to give you a true and accurate belief about and experience of God.

Prayer: Pray that your church will help you and many others develop a true picture of God. As you and others seek to hear God’s voice during this season, pray that you’ll listen well and discern wisely, sorting out false pictures of god from the true and good God revealed in the person of Jesus.