The waiters served Joseph at his own table, and his brothers were served at a separate table. The Egyptians who ate with Joseph sat at their own table, because Egyptians despise Hebrews and refuse to eat with them. Genesis 43:32

Jacob’s children allowed jealousy to set events in motion that lead to the enslavement of their family for generations, for four hundred years. To take a step further back, Jacob allowed blatant favouritism to set in motion the jealousy that lead his sons to sell their brother into slavery.

BUT GOD!

Two generations before, our Father told Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved for four hundred years. And He promised Abraham that He would rescue them, and have them leave with compensation for their years of slavery. He also promised Abraham that the enslaving nation would bear the consequences of their actions (Genesis 15:12-16)

As imperfectly perfect parents our mistakes affect our children in ways that we do not intend, and would never condone. But God promises to restore. The sins of the parents affect the children for up to four generations (You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me. But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands.
Exodus 20:5-6 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage?search=Exodus%2020:5-6&version=NLT).

Consequences are not interminable. God is merciful, and He builds restoration into spaces of failure. That is a guarantee. Consequences are also certain, that is another guarantee. God has built blessings and consequences into His perfectly just system of operation. Both blessings and consequences are activated entirely by our choices.

So dear parents, let us be mindful of how we are with our children, how we are in life, for our actions set the tone of their lives. And thankfully our Wonderful Loving Father is with us through it all.

My heart bleeds and breaks for clergy. Ever since I was a child, I saw how embattled this group of people were, how isolated, how somewhat arrogant they could become, because people often worshipped them instead of worshiping God.

Israel did this to Moses, instead of walking together to the mountain to listen to God’s voice for themselves, they delegated Moses, who had weaknesses and struggles just like they all did. And soon they began to elevate Moses’ ways over God’s.

Somewhere along the way, clergy began to be trained to teach of this vengeful genie god, fashioned after Moses’ error. For thousands of years, Moses’ error has plagued us. And now, many of our loving leaders who are called to guide to love, have turned to worship themselves, in the face of the truth of the false genie god. They are losing faith, thankfully, in this false god, and because they have been taught that the misconception in which they have been solidly trained is truth, they often stop short of looking for the truth of I AM, Who Is Love, and they worship themselves as they have been worshipped. They become humanists.

Several years ago, I sat with a fellow mom, among a group of seminarians, in a workshop taught by a retired theologian with a passion for building community in small groups. I cannot recall his name. He took us out of theory into practice as he guided us through a simulated small group Bible study using John 7:53-8:11, the story of the woman taken in adultery, as the focus.

We read through the passage, and we listened to each person speak of the light that they had gleaned as they listened to or read that story in scripture. I find the whys and the underlying original cultural context and language, the hermeneutics of the stories, fascinating. It was delightful to listen to these fresh excited seminarians discuss their newly gained knowledge, and listen to them each take a turn to use that knowledge to unpack the treasure buried in the Word.

Then one of them, a fine young brother, looked around at the sister momma and me, and said “It must be so hard for you to sit here among a group of seminarians”. I smiled. His slightly inflated ego ran headlong into my slightly bruised ego, but thankfully I was in the thick of an incredible journey of love with the I AMs, so I smiled.

The facilitator then asked me if I had anything to contribute from our reading. I shared that for the first time, I noted that Jesus allowed all the accusers the opportunity to speak, and He listened without interruption, while positioning Himself to be with the woman in a place of both support and protection. I shared that for the first time I saw how He cared for the hearts of everyone involved, speaking truth quietly, clearly, and closely to every heart while protecting them. The facilitator noted that in all his years of study he had never seen that. Neither had I. The Spirit of God, present with us in our common passion to see deeper truth, had revealed that to us.

So, dear clergy, as you delve into the Word through the lens of the ancient Hebrew and Greek, be humbly grateful for the role that you play in bringing light to the human search for the Redeemer. Be certain that you guide your congregants to close personal interaction with the Spirit of God, and may we together crush the idol of ego, as we look with gratitude to the God of all-encompassing love.

Did Moses lose his inheritance because he did not enter Canaan, if he gained heaven? Let God show us our boundaries so that we do not carry burdens that we cannot and were not meant to carry. It seems that Moses’ ways, when he repeatedly took matters into his own hands, created more harm than good. Jesus references this habit in Matthew 19, where he speaks of Moses instituting divorce.

Moses struggled with carrying the unbalanced weight of outcome on his back. He killed an Egyptian and then had to run for his life, because he thought that he could save Israel in his time, his way. After God freed them His way, Moses was killing himself with the burden of single handed leadership. He could not naturally delegate authority, and release outcome. Were it not for his father-in-law, Jethro, Moses would have worked himself into an earlier grave.

In Exodus 32:27-29, did Moses lie to the people? Did he again take matters into his own hands, and order people killed? Did he then congratulate the murderous men by telling them that they had ordained themselves for God, when God had not given them any command to kill anyone?

Did Moses convince the people that God had sanctioned his bloodbath? When he went back to God piously offering to sacrifice himself, God told him that people’s personal choices created their consequences.

Back in Exodus 23:20-32, God told the people that He would create panic among those who had been squatting on Abraham’s land for generations, so that they would leave before Israel arrived. He told Israel to destroy the gods – not the people. Was the Israelite practice of genocide created because of Moses’ lie?

In Genesis 32:35, we read of the consequences that the people activated because of their choice. This seemed to be the natural consequence that God built into the good/evil ways of being. So did Moses lie?

When Moses finally struck the rock instead of speaking to it, as God had told him, again using self-directed violence instead of following God’s way, God told Moses that he would not be able to go into the Promised Land. Would Moses have created more bloodshed than he had already built into Israelite culture if he had been allowed to go into Canaan?

Do we see how well-intentioned spiritual leaders, who have been genuinely called and equipped to lead, can create such a mess by doing things their way instead of God’s way?

And yet, Moses gained heaven. Look at God’s amazing grace. He sees beyond our actions to our hearts. What amazing grace.

Jesus came to show us God’s way of being: For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved. John 3:17.

And as they crucified Him, He looked with love at them all, and He said “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”.

Seek God’s ways like the Baereans; verify always whether the things that you are taught are truly His ways. Acts 17:11

God’s way is love: 1 Corinthians 13.

“We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace…” Amanda Gorman.

Throughout these last four years I’ve repeatedly said that I am incredibly grateful for the term of the 45th president of the United States. Why? This was the minor explosion that fully exposed the intensely destructive heat of hatred in the core of the nation. Trump was not the issue, he was thankfully the spewing rock that signalled the lurking danger of the eruption of hidden festered hatred. We should be grateful that we can no longer mask the mess; it was poisonous, painful.

During President and Mrs. Obama’s eight years of service to their country as President and First Lady, the monstrous volcano of racism began to publicly rumble at about a level 2, code yellow, with cowardly attacks of chicken and watermelon derision, the constant birth certificate requests spearheaded by the Manhattan real estate tycoon who could do a better job, and repeated loads of sulphuric vitriol directed at the First Family. The sanctioned racially motivated attacks on Michelle Obama during their presidential campaign were unconscionable and unrelenting. Mount Bigotry was no longer just comfortably poisoning the daily lives of BIPOCs with deadly silence. We knew that quiet did not mean peace. Up till then we had been choking on the fumes. It was stealing our oxygen. We could not collectively breathe. And our panicked eyes and muted screams were being ignored.

Then, on June 16, 2015 there were warning bells that signalled Mount Bigotry’s possible escalation to level orange. Instead of carefully assessing the danger, and collaborating with the people on how to get to safety together, the two powers began to squabble for supremacy, drawing the masses into their unhealthy ruckus with rhetoric designed to polarize, designed to inflame emotions that bypassed the seat of reason, that eliminated the need for accountability and which settled instead for mind-numbing, baudy entertainment.

And we continued to gasp for breath, though sometimes they would pull one of us out to the surface where the air was cleaner, and they would direct the controllers of the bellows that pumped that sulphuric vitriol into our atmosphere to move less vigorously in the environs of that one, so that they could stand as the bait of hope, knowing full well that there was no real intention of bringing us all to the surface to fill our lungs with breath, the essence of life. And while they breathed, we still gasped for breath.

Poor funding of schools for us by us. Quiet.
Affirmative action with many left behind. Quiet.
Integration into a pool of hatred. Quiet. Eventually.
Planned parenthood. Quiet.
Food deserts. Quiet.
Policies that splinter our families through child protection and prison. Quiet. Saviour. Quiet.
Cheap labour through undocumented immigration. Quiet.

Quiet is not always peace.

And so the hazard level continued to rise, until it finally hit level orange. The dwelling of a black family in the White House interrupted the unholy quiet, the temperature began to rise. Imminent eruption. And the people blamed the hazard level. Blame the orange.

I’ve listened to Mrs. Obama lament the fact that many black people did not vote in the 2016 election. I don’t think she understands how those eight years of attacks on her family dampened hope. Trayvon, Tamir, Michael, Sandra, worshippers in Charleston, Philando, shot dead. And amidst all of that crushing weight, no candidate for leadership spoke hope, they incited hatred and division, deplorables and losers. So heavy. So hot. So suffocating.

And now. Now again, someone has begun to speak of hope. And even though they are speaking of hope, make no mistake, this change, this shifting of the orange level downwards was wrought by people like Stacey Abrams who guided black, indigenous, and other people of colour out of harm’s way, who empowered us to walk ourselves out of harm’s way. Another Moses risen.

We’re not gasping anymore. We are standing. And if we who are now standing, can combine strengths with those who have seen how close they came to a destructive hate-filled explosion, we can eventually lift voices together in loud celebrations of real love and unity. Then we will know peace.

Last Thursday, March 26, 2020, I sat with God, as usually I do, this time consciously surrendering to His Higher Power of love, to lift the suffocating burden of suffering, as only He can. I felt the weight of the darkness of global uncertainty. I feel these things deeply. I see people, as He designed me to. He has designed me to see beyond “the outward appearance”, and I have asked Him to filter my vision through His lens. Some people see numbers, some people see concepts, some people see buildings, some people see songs, some people see people. When we put all this vision together, we connect, we intersect, we challenge and support each other; we excel.

I see people, and so the weight of suffering, the weight of our world’s intensified fear, as we battle this new microscopic viral enemy, COVID-19, sat heavily on me. Personally I felt peace. I know my Good Shepherd. He repeatedly rescues and provides for me. And yet the weight of global fear was pressing in on me. I sat with Him, intentionally feeling all the uncertainty, surrendering the fear to Him, and as usual He brought me a song as solace, Abide With Me. https://youtu.be/84YASWe3_2QAbide: To stay/reside with; remain; continue; to endure, sustain or withstand without yielding or submitting. To be constant, according to dictionary.com. Listening to that old, familiar hymn completely soothed my heart. My Father reminded me that He has already chosen to abide with me, and I in Him, if I choose. Again, I handed Him my grief, and He handed me peace. We’ll likely have to go through that process again, as He often has to remind me that we are all safe with Him. I am so grateful for His patience.

And because He knew that I needed the energy to tackle the task of opening a new door, even with present pandemic concerns, He sent me to this song: https://youtu.be/84YASWe3_2Q – Unchangeable by Joepraize. And then He hit me with this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=RDBfH4M15M9Fk&feature=share&playnext=1

Bro, Sis, y’all, someone had compiled alllll the fliest songs that I could ever ask for. I knocked out a resumé; I folded laundry (if you know, you know), I danced; I sang; I grooved. It was beautiful. I shared the groove on that day. I wish that I had also shared then the darker place in which I had begun.

I don’t easily share the things that press most deeply on me. I generally process those things alone. I have learned to hear God as He guides me to His word, and as He guides me to books or workshops by other people who have walked the same path. And I share as the weight is being lifted, to help encourage someone else, or I will speak with another person, very few, very select people, if I feel that I am way too close to despair. I don’t know that this is the best way to be. In fact, I’m pretty close to certain that it is not the best way to be. I need to learn to trust the people whom God has brought into my life by birth, or through life’s journey.

We’re in this life together. We were made for connection, not just to God, but we were made to connect with each other. We are always better together. Our various ways of being and seeing bring unique light to the hearts we meet, to our own hearts. I hope that my sharing here will encourage someone else to connect both to God, and to the safe people around them. If you’re not sure who is safe, ask God to help you see the helpers. I can promise you that He will.

Psalm 23

A psalm of David.

The Lord is my shepherd;
I have all that I need.
He lets me rest in green meadows;
he leads me beside peaceful streams.
He renews my strength.
He guides me along right paths,
bringing honor to his name.
Even when I walk
through the darkest valley,^[a]
I will not be afraid,
for you are close beside me.
Your rod and your staff
protect and comfort me.
You prepare a feast for me
in the presence of my enemies.
You honor me by anointing my head with oil.
My cup overflows with blessings.
Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me
all the days of my life,
and I will live in the house of the Lord
forever.

Footnotes:

❤️🌈