Natural Recompense

Posted on August 27, 2016 by ehurst

In my hand was one of those folding extended reach tools, which I call a “picker.” Out in Choctaw I always kept one for picking blackberries and sand plums. Around here it’s now used as a trash picker. In my other hand was a recycled t-shirt bag. One of the occasional contractors was sitting on the dropped down tailgate of his truck and asked me, “Why don’t you pick up the sticks?”

I replied, “Sticks and leaves may look tacky to some, but they belong on the ground. Trash does not.”

He pressed further: “Who decides what is trash and what isn’t?”

Spreading my laden hands, I said, “Nature decides.”

“Oh, so you think you talk to nature?” It was slightly derisive in tone.

“The point here is that nature talks to me and tells me what needs to go.” I wore my disarming half-smile.

“I don’t hear anything,” he said with a grin.

“I’m willing to hear, so nature speaks loud enough for me. Maybe some day you’ll learn to hear it, too.” I turned and resumed my task.

That’s how it works. I don’t trust my intellect for the task; it’s not as if the Green eco-nuts know anything. All it takes is just a few minutes listening to their passionate arguments and you realize they have no clue about the heart-mind, and so no clue about what constitutes pollution. It’s all human intellect and emotion. Leave it up to them and they’ll rip up the asphalt and concrete, ban all cars (except their special eco-buggies), and make us live in tiny boxes up on stilts — no plumbing or electricity.

That might be “natural,” but it’s not realistic. Further, Creation doesn’t demand that. It handles things pretty well around here, but seems to appreciate a little daily attention to remove the contemptuous garbage left by utterly mindless butt-heads. Nor do I confront them with yelling about having to pick up their garbage. That would be pointless until they can listen with their hearts, as well. Laws certainly don’t stop them, nor do threats of fines from the apartment complex management.

No, the whole point is that nature calls to me and asks for my help. I can’t say “no.” Nature knows already what is fair and just, and knows that I am one of the few who hears its cries. Communion with Creation is its own reward.

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Free Care Is Expensive

Posted on August 26, 2016 by ehurst

Hospitals are not a healthy atmosphere.

Yesterday was another VA appointment. I didn’t learn what I wanted to know, but I did learn something. Through the stumbling bureaucratic confusion, I managed to get an echo cardiogram. The technician said she saw nothing to indicate a problem with valve function anywhere. However, the cardiologist said it isn’t Wolf-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome, so now I’m left wondering if anyone knows what to call this thing. Apparently the graphing of my heart activity doesn’t match the subtle shapes for WPW.

But I had only a brief visit because my appointment was later in the day, by which time this highly overburdened division of the hospital is way behind schedule. I’m hoping the cardiologist is the kind of doctor who finishes the task and lets me know what she can tell me. At least she had time to tell me that there is no risk from resuming my previous level of physical activity.

Meanwhile, every time I go up to the VA Hospital, it wears me out. It’s not the kind of good exhaustion from physical activity, though I do prefer taking the stairs instead of the elevator for all the chasing between the ten floors in that place. It’s something more subtle and draining just from being there. It’s a heart-attack of the other kind, the kind where your heart-mind is taxed.

Still, I sensed God’s favor in a powerful tingling way. All day long it was surging and never faded. Thus, I concluded that, whatever the cost, I was doing the right thing for someone somewhere. That’s enough for me. I had an engaging conversation with a bored old Zoomie (Air Force veteran) who evinced a solid mental acuity. We chatted about politics and he was entertained by my cynicism and lack of partisanship. He took the time to share some interesting historical tidbits from his experiences. He was careful, but it was obvious he spent time working under Air Force Intel operations by what he knew.

Encounters like that often don’t result in strong intellectual influence, but for me they often open the doorways in my mind to things my heart already knows. So it wasn’t what he told me that matters about that encounter; what matters was how he triggered recognition of things I already knew. He even went so far as to say he got the same effect from me. It’s unlikely I’ll ever see him again, but it was a blessing in the midst of a burdensome atmosphere.

That atmosphere hit me hard. I still had stuff to do when I got home, and by the time my head hit the pillow I had forgotten several parts of my daily routine. Nothing dangerous, but it’s annoying to see it affect me that way. I’m hoping to take it slow today and recover my faculties, because I still feel that sense of fatigue.

Here’s hoping I don’t have to go back to the VA unless it’s really important, because the personal price is high.

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Don’t Waste It

Posted on August 25, 2016 by ehurst

We could comment prophetically on the scene around us. For example, the Civil Rights Movement — it’s not as if there were no real problems there, but they were never solved. Instead, new problems were introduced because, whatever it was the movement started out to be, it was quickly hijacked by elitists for their own power and profit.

And that so-called Antiwar Movement of the 1960s? The Hippies and Flower Children actually got in the way, and that was the way some elites planned it. A whole genre of music was cooked up and turned into a major business just to smother the real deal. Woodstock was not anti-establishment; it was just good old debauchery with funny outfits and loud music. And the people behind it were all from the families of American pro-war nobility.

Not that it really matters much, and that’s why we don’t waste much time talking about such things. We have the wisdom of God in our hearts enabling us to see that stuff, but that’s not why He gave it. A little closer to home is the story of how various new efforts to restore ancient faith have also been hijacked and turned into religious entertainment empires.

So today we have this highly materialistic Prosperity Gospel like a ball and chain around the necks of those who discovered something they thought had been long lost. You can hardly get folks to talk about miracles and visions without getting a big does of “God gimme.” People pray in unknown tongues only so they can have a thrill and get stuff. One of those worries that lurks around the edges of my soul is that our discovery of heart-led communion with Creation will be hijacked the same way.

Why do you suppose the Father granted us this rediscovery of the heart-mind? It’s not to keep it hidden away in the underbrush. Yes, we all will need a certain measure of time away from this noisy shallow world around us, but Jesus climbed mountains to meet with His Father precisely because there was someone down at the bottom of those mountains who needed that revelation brought down to them.

We absorb the mighty gifts of grace and mercy precisely so we can shine the light into a darkened world. If we don’t bring that peace back into the tumult, then we might as well die now and get out of the way. Our mission is His glory in this world. That’s the whole point of reawakening the ancient traditions of trusting our hearts to know God.

Give your attention to your calling and let God worry about the consequences. Seek to awaken the full wisdom of knowing from your heart, but make sure you don’t get lost in all the joy and wonder for yourself. And don’t just shove it into someone else’s face and then run away. The power to commune with Creation is the power to stick around and mediate between Creation and some lost soul who may have an awful long way to come back to sanity. God has been so very patient with me; how can I not pass that forward? Some of you know personally that I’m not just preaching things I won’t do. I’ll keep working with you until God says otherwise; I am not a quitter, but I’ll cut my losses when my heart says so.

And some of you have turned around some really bad situations in your own life. For this, I bow my busted knees to the Father and give thanks. Keep those stories coming; I need to hear them.

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Singing in the Rain

Posted on August 24, 2016 by ehurst

Look out! Here it comes.

God designed us to live by our hearts, not by our minds. It’s not as if we are the only ones who know this, but there are precious few sources on the Net approaching it the way we do here. We have built up a rather substantial psychology around it. But this is not exclusively ours; we should always assume God could choose better servants and humbly thank Him for including us.

I’m driven by this. It’s clear to me that this is the time in human history when this truth must be restored. I stand by my prediction: There will be an exodus from the Zionist churches. Don’t try to pin down the particulars; it’s not like that. Rather, I intend to lead this parish in readiness to help these refugees. They may never join our work here, but we have a duty to assist these folks in recovery from all the big lies, however many of them we encounter. Not just here on this blog or in my books and blather, I’m calling on all of you to echo this message in your own lives, in your own way.

A part of the shift in reality we see in recent days is a de facto demand from God that the world return to the heart-led approach to reality. People are going bonkers because God has introduced a variability that was not there before. I’m not sure I can say this accurately; only a parable will do. It’s as if a grand arch-demon was permitted to create a massive delusion in the birth of Western thinking. Reality seemed to work consistently on that lower level of intellectual reasoning. This spirit was allowed to dumb-down human existence to lull a major portion of humanity into moral slumber (God’s plans are inscrutable). But it seems to me this demon has been pulled back from that mission (at least for a while). The true variability of reality is leaking back into our world again and it’s driving folks bonkers.

So the only hope for sanity is to reawaken the heart-mind. It’s as if God is ripping open the cocoon and it’s time to spread your wings and fly or risk being eaten. The only way anyone can hope to handle this changed context is to rise to the highest faculties of our human design. We are blessed to have a part in this redemptive work.

My heart is on fire about this. If you’ve ever doubted my sanity, the coming days will confirm your suspicions. The storm has begun, but I’ll be singing the rain.

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We Won’t Play

Posted on August 23, 2016 by ehurst

Start the game without us.

This is just a fresh restatement of where this parish stands. We aren’t looking to change the course of history. Our Savior made it clear that human political action accomplishes nothing useful for His Kingdom. His Kingdom is not of this world. He avoided politics like the plague, especially when folks tried to make Him the wrong kind of king. He is Lord of Heaven and Earth already; human events at large are His concern, not ours. He told us to stay out of human politics, just as He did when He walked among us.

So we are neither supporters nor enemies of modern Israel. We simply deny that it matters either way what Israel does — she remains a blasphemous insult to God’s revelation, same as every other human government on this earth. She did have a special status at one time, but it rested on her obedience to the Covenant. She rejected the terms of the Covenant and rejected God’s only Son. The bar has been raised. She is now obliged to obey the Laws of God as taught by Christ if she wants one shred of the Covenant promises. The moment she returns to God’s true Law, we will be first in line to support her. Until then, she remains outside the Covenant.

We offer the same support to any other political entity that adheres to the applicable Law Covenant — which is the Law of Noah for everyone else. But the status of Israel as a nation and as individuals always stood on covenant adherence. Anyone could be a Child of Israel by choosing to be a Child of the Law. It was not the DNA; God could raise up children of Abraham from the stones on the ground. It was always a matter of obedience.

Thus, anyone who supports modern Israel under false claims about Bible prophecy is under God’s wrath because they call God a liar.

So Israel isn’t special, just a human political construct like any other. Neither can the Jewish people claim a special status so long as they adhere to the Talmud — which Jesus called bogus traditions of mere men. The Talmud is nothing more than a perverted reassessment of the words of the Bible that arose from the influence of Hellenism. What the New Testament calls “Pharisaism” is the core of modern Judaism. Legalistic Judaism is a direct rejection of the ancient Hebrew intellectual traditions. The Son of God said as much.

But we are not hostile to Jewish people any more than any other ethnic, national or racial identity. They need Jesus, same as all humans: “There is no other name under Heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

So the primary issue is our denial of the special status so urgently claimed by Zionists. Even in this, there is no fight, no plan to oppose Zionism. We simply deny the claims and stand ready to explain our denial. We don’t debate; there’s nothing to gain by that. But we are quite willing to point out the holes and offer God’s Word. If no one believes our message, that’s God’s problem. Our mission is simply to walk in the truth to which He calls us, and claim the blessings of His promises. We have a prophetic duty to live and speak the truth.

We don’t stand in your way, Zionist fools, but we refuse to join your folly.

Update: This article offers the secular historical background for the same position.

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Tell Them You Love Me

Posted on August 23, 2016 by ehurst

(This constitutes a fundamental teaching in our religion.)

My aspiration is your affection.

Mysticism presumes that what really matters is beyond words. We cannot possibly transmit truth, but we can fellowship in our shared truth via human communications. That requires a certain shared contextual language and culture. Our context militates against mysticism, but we agree to use the imagery of our culture against itself. We pretend to share in the culture only so we can tear it down, at least in the sense that we agree not to take it too seriously in its claims about itself. We use it with a knowing wink.

There is a mythology in our culture that human greatness matters. The concept in itself is abused. Even if we accept for a moment the pretense of objectivity as a goal of our cultural vehicle, “greatness” is defined as holding personal significance to a substantial number of other people. It’s contextual, of course. We could say that someone is a “great man” within the context of some discussion, knowing that his greatness won’t easily translate outside that particular realm. But the whole idea is to preempt any need to examine the fellow in any detail, just presume he’s approved and start paying attention to what he says and does.

It’s a form of certification, a license to hold attention. I don’t want one of those, so don’t ever tell someone I’m a great anything. Tell people you love me — or hate me, or don’t give a damn. All that other person needs to know is wrapped up in the context of your personal affection for me. There is nothing objective about this because I can do nothing at all for anyone from the grounds of objectivity. The whole point of my sense of who I am is to combat the myth of objectivity, so a part of that is combating the myth of human greatness. If you’re going to pay attention to me, it’s because something totally subjective calls your name.

Otherwise, it can’t bless you.

The great blessings of God come with the presumption that we enjoy them in a flawed context. Further, our greatest blessing is actually the company of flawed people. There aren’t any other kind of people, so we have to build a counterculture that presumes to love anyway. Notice that this is not despite flaws, but in part because of the flaws, for it is the mixture of flaw and goodness that gives us our identity.

So we make much of transparency about those flaws.

Now, we also need to take a moment to revisit the issue of privacy versus secrecy. Generally, a secret is something kept from your awareness that has at least the potential to affect you. A private matter has no effect on you. The same detail of information can move from private to secret depending on your involvement. There is plenty you’ll probably never know about me, if only because there’s no way I can put it into words. But the closer you get to me, the more access you have to my privacy because it starts to affect you.

You really do not need the burden of knowing and processing something that won’t affect you. Thus, my sense of privacy protects both of us. There are things I really don’t want to know about you, either. Some stuff becomes clutter that hinders a proper moral focus. It’s an art to distinguish, and we justly rely on the heart for the wisdom to decide something like that.

Of particular interest in all of this is when someone feels driven or pulled into religious leadership. That presumes a certain moral probity, a certain moral authority — a certification of sorts that justifies their claim to a hearing on the matters of religion and morality.

But the defining issue is not the leader’s personal moral perfection, but their transparency. You really do need to know enough about them to place their message in context. In our culture, though, this is a lie. In fact, it’s a really big lie. It’s hard to find someone in religious leadership who is even permitted to assume that kind of transparency. Their followers are typically dragging around this baggage of “speak no evil of the leader” who is universally proclaimed “a great man”.

My personal experience hanging out with religious leaders bears this out. You would think they were eager to confess their flaws in private because they would get into trouble for a wider transparency. So once I manage to wander inside their circle of leadership, they unload all sorts of things they simply cannot say from the pulpit. And the difference between the private person and the public face is often shocking. I found it the most revolting aspect of working in church leadership.

I’m driven so hard to fight this beast that I have often said and done things that shocked the flock. In the context, it was embarrassing only in that I might feel forced to buy into the mythology, if only for the moment. Once I got away from that atmosphere, my own convictions justified my divulgence. I’m reluctant to treat anyone like a pig who can’t use any pearls.

Whatever you do, don’t call me a “great man;” just tell people you love me.

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Turn in the Path

Posted on August 22, 2016 by ehurst

Alright, parish; let me tell you what’s going on in my soul right now.

Let’s restate some things. Reality has shifted over the past few weeks by increments. As Sister Christine puts it, most days we wake up in a different reality than the one in which we went to bed. This is not shocking in itself, because I keep telling everyone that reality is fungible and God can change things radically without us even knowing it. The difference is that He is allowing some of us heart-led folks to sense it directly.

The folks around us who lack that faculty range between being oblivious and confused without a clue what is happening. Most of them can’t connect their personal experience with something bigger. Yet everywhere I look, folks are starting to act crazy, whether they know it or not. It’s crazy from both mental logic and from heart logic.

You can probably guess that the demons have been given a fresh mission to confuse and deceive. But instead of heading to some kind of physical apocalypse, it’s going to be something else entirely. We will still have wars and a whole range of unusual natural events, but what really matters here is that folks will just go completely bonkers, as in bizarre behavior. And most of them will have no idea why they are acting that way because it’s not discerned intellectually.

Our mission remains walking heart-led and teaching it any way we can. People have to see the glory of God’s favor in our lives. People have to see us operating on heart logic, and at every opportunity, we need to tell them what is different. We have to explain our sense of peace and aplomb in the face of global madness.

And bizarre global madness is the primary symptom of the coming tribulation.

So we are not surprised that traffic on this blog is down lately. Some portion of our traffic has always been folks who are not heart-led. A reduction in traffic is not a problem, just a signal. It’s part of the larger movement of God in shaking His body, seeing who is really part of it and who is just hanging around. We are about to enter a more difficult time for religion.

Here in the US, the problem is unlikely to be government oppression of religion, but the oppression from organized religion. As always, the biggest threat to this blog is mainstream Christianity. And from among mainstream Christians, the most activist bunch of all is the pro-Zionist church lobby.

Here’s what they hope to see: They want modern Israel to reclaim substantially all the land she held at the Conquest Period at least, and many want to see the vastly expanded Greater Israel held under David’s reign. They also expect to see the Temple rebuilt on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and the ritual worship restored with all the priests and burnt offerings.

Then they expect to see all that End Times stuff that forms the primary mythology of the Left Behind series.

But it won’t happen. I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel gets those things, but it won’t make any difference. The bulk of Israeli citizens won’t return to the strict observance of the Talmud, much less the actual Law of Moses. Instead, it will be this secularized sick mythology of being God’s Chosen without having to obey God. They will imagine once again that they have God over a barrel because that’s His House and His People and He’ll be obliged to protect it.

Meanwhile, the End Times will not come. I’m not sure how this will all pan out because it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that an awful lot of very determined people do believe this shit and are on the verge of pushing like never before to make it happen. They’ve been cooking up something bizarre in their secret councils; you can smell it. Whether they announce anything or not, they are on the verge of taking action toward the goals of Zionism.

Our mission is not to oppose this in any activist sense, but to point out the obvious truth that everyone tries to ignore. There is nothing we can do to change the stampede into madness, but we can stand ready to help anyone who gets badly bruised enough to depart from it. What really matters is none of that stuff. What really matters is that the future requires folks learn to walk heart-led. God is stirring up wrath, and only those who are heart-led can understand it and how to make the most of it. We can harvest all the true blessings of God and His shalom.

You should recognize that this topic of Zionism will figure somewhat larger in future posts. There’s no way I can avoid it. This will draw unwanted attention, and if you aren’t ready for it, now is the time to step back. It may turn out to be nothing, but play it safe just in case. I don’t want anybody hurt who doesn’t feel called to face this. So maybe you should avoid commenting on my posts, or at least use a bogus email address and don’t provide a real web link.

Again: This is not any kind of crusade. They are the activists, not we. We just want to point out the path to God’s reality for anyone who feels His tap on their shoulder. I can’t tell you what that may require for you; I’m not assigning parts. For myself, it’s not about proving Zionists wrong. I’ll keep the large body of research sources I’ve collected, but the point is not persuasive writing. The point is helping you keep your head in subjection to your heart. I’ll be trying to disembowel the big monster lies that stomp and roar and stink, but actually have no power to harm.

That’s what I see right now.

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God Responds

Posted on August 22, 2016 by ehurst

I’ve concluded that our ISP has started blocking our incoming traffic, so the FTP server is gone for now.

There was a time when I was taught that, insofar as God knew the future, it had to be envisioned as something set in stone at Creation. That is, every detail of future events in our fallen realm was planned out down to the last movement of subatomic particles. It was all locked in; God knew the future because He made the future and was so utterly perfect and wise about it that the mere thought of revising it was blasphemous.

I understood it, but my heart said it was a lie. I just didn’t have the basis for coming up with an argument against that teaching. All the theological alternatives were equally bad. Having made the choice to make my heart the executive in my life, my mind now grasps the nature of things differently.

God is living and active in our affairs. He relates to us personally, but primarily through our hearts. If we begin to live by our convictions, our brain finds out that the heart is alive and superior, because it breathes the wisdom of God as a manifestation of His moral character. Moreover, Creation itself is alive, not some inanimate lump of stuff that can be preprogrammed. His promises say that if we come closer to His truth, He will bless us with things we can’t otherwise have.

That signals a living variability. God’s moral character doesn’t change, but His Creation and His hand on Creation does vary according to how well we conform ourselves to the image of His Son.

I wasn’t mistaken when my spirit prophetically warned that the world was about to enter some measure of apocalyptic disaster time a few years back. That was where it was headed. Something has changed God’s plans for us, particularly for us who seek a heart-led existence. We now stand knowingly in the shadow of His grace and mercy, so He has decided to moderate His plans. He can receive from Creation the same glory — even greater glory — by coming up with some other sequence of events. History is fungible in the same sense that all of reality is fungible. So long as His glory shines, the details can be adjusted.

Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t the kind of arrogance that we have somehow displaced Ancient Israel and now sit in their favored spot. We are not a replacement for them. We have not inherited the grand experiment of creating a special sacred political entity on this earth. But we have inherited the mission God gave to all of humanity way back after the Fall. We see the words of the Curse in Genesis 3, but there was that business of the Flaming Sword. Let that sword have it’s work in you and Eden is open once again. You have to stop eating from the Tree of Human Intellect. We are still under the Covenant of Noah, as was always the case, but the Covenant of Moses ended at the Cross. Replacement Theology is bogus because there’s nothing to replace.

So whatever it was I was doing with the FTP server and all that other stuff is no longer needed. I’ve been banging my head against the wall trying to keep that previous plan working while everything fell apart. I didn’t understand until a string of realizations finally awakened the awareness that there’s been a change in plans. The same hardware and technology will be used some other way. I haven’t seen it yet because my mind is just now ready to let the old plans go.

I’m not trying to cover any embarrassment for maybe having stupid plans, as if I didn’t really understand God’s will. Those were good, solid, heart-led plans for the way things were headed then. Things aren’t headed that way now, so I have to be nimble and ready to drop what I was doing and start working on what comes next. I’m willing to bet some of you have sensed something similar. The basic mission is the same and our teaching won’t change. The strategy is the same, but we will have to work on new tactics.

Pray with me that I can discern my part; let’s pray together that we are ready to respond to the call.

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Not an Apocalypse

Posted on August 21, 2016 by ehurst

Those of you who live in or near America, or just enjoy watching what goes on here, should be prepared for something other than an apocalypse. The coming tribulation will most certainly be the end of the US as we know it, but that’s not to say it’s going to be anything like the dystopian nightmare stuff of movies and fiction. Things will be tough for awhile and daily commerce will be disrupted. Set your mind on being adaptable.

People ask me why I’m so quick to change my computer OS. They act like there’s some unspoken expectation of brand loyalty or something silly like that. I switch around in part because it helps keep me sharp on the various tasks, such as assessing which OS works with which hardware. However, the real issue is that I sense a change in the context that signals a different set of needs. None of them are perfect, but they each have unique qualities, and each runs differently on the varied hardware I get to use.

So right now, I’ve had to ditch Win7 on the laptop and Debian seems to work right now. It’s not as if I simply blew off the huge time investment putting Win7 on it; I made a recovery image before switching to Debian. Someone remarked once that I must have a system for keeping track of files and configs. That’s true; I keep backups on several media and I’ve gotten pretty handy at migration.

Crazy or not, this is what I do folks. It’s not a question of being flighty, because I manage to keep track of my stuff and keep writing these blog posts just about every day. In my world, computer OSes are fungible and I consider it a minor task to switch around. This is one of the ways I adapt quickly to the changing context. I’m a technology chameleon; it’s my calling from God.

I’m sure you have your own range of things for which you adapt quickly. By the same token, some changes seem to be more painful. I’m no different on that, but my background is probably quite different from yours, so the mix is my own. We pray that God carries us through the things ahead of us so that we can keep our minds focused on the mission of His glory.

This the vision that drives me: By manifesting a wholly different approach to dealing with life, and showing a harvest of blessings from God, we help to dismantle the lies that hold everyone else in prison. This world sucks, in the sense that “world” means the vast collected human imprint on Creation. And Creation is just begging us to show the world how it really does work.

We are up against a massive global system that denies our truth. Our primary task is to ignore that denial as much as possible. We keep right on doing stuff according to our radically different outlook, never mind what the rest of this world thinks makes more sense. We aren’t trying to make sense; we are trying to reflect God’s glory.

So on the one hand, most of what you do right now is unlikely to change. That is, the circumstances themselves won’t force any changes. Rather, whatever changes we institute will answer to something most people cannot perceive. We already knew that there was a rise of natural disasters coming, so we set our hearts on seeing what God wants to say through those disasters. We knew that social turmoil was coming, and that the Western social fabric was rotten. We knew this would also see political turmoil, because the cumulative sins of Western Civilization can only produce global war.

But it’s not the End of all things. The vision of the Apocalypse was never what most people read into it in the first place. We have to rid ourselves of the Jack T. Chick nightmare scenarios about tribulation (a reference to some popular evangelical cartoon pamphlets). It’s time to go back and reexamine what your mind has been taught to expect and keep your eyes on what God is doing in your personal life. The sense of conviction and calling is the key.

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Psalm 114

Posted on August 20, 2016 by ehurst

This is the second of the “Hallel Psalms” sung before the Passover meal. In Hebrew, this is the lyrical equivalent of a powerful appetizer — it is very small and simple, yet dense in satisfying flavor. These few brief words conjure up a savory memory of really big events.

It’s obvious this is about the Exodus, the founding miracle that defined just who Israel was, but more importantly, who God intended she be. The psalmist draws a strong connection here to explain how it works. Ancient Near Eastern feudalism was not about land, as with Western feudalism, but about the people. A ruler’s domain was his people. During that journey out of Egypt, a wholly alien people, Jehovah is depicted as personally present at the head of the march. He was Lord and Creator of all things, as He has just proved with the plagues that discredited all the claims of the Egyptian pantheon.

One thing Israel did have in common with Egypt was the fundamental assumption that Creation was alive. This is no mere figure of speech that sees the waters as pulling back to make room for the two crossings (Reed Sea and Jordan River). The water knew its Master and cooperated with His purpose.

Indeed, all of Creation wherever they passed was delighted to see the revelation of the Creator in His mighty acts. The mountains pranced like proud rams and playful sheep. Gladly did stone dissolve into water, for nothing was too great to ask in supporting and promoting this essential mission of God. He was raising up a nation to bear His message. Not merely the written record, but the living record of people precious in His sight who would claim the rich heritage of His blessings.

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