My Thornbush has Roses
Many years ago, I heard someone say, “We can complain that our rose bush has thorns, or we can rejoice that our thorn bush has roses.” I didn’t know at the time that it was a lesson in the art of reframing similar to making lemonade out of life’s lemons. Somehow, I’ve always thought in these terms. Maybe it was a natural development of survival, or maybe I learned it from watching the movie Pollyanna when I was young.
Thorn bushes, to me, are the basic troubles and trials in this life that are part of living in a fallen world. For Adam and Eve, the thorns and thistles were outside the garden and not part of their life until after the fall. Then, all kinds of troubles they were not supposed to deal with became life companions. Death and sickness are probably some of the worst thorns they dealt with and that we still deal with in today’s world.
But we also have roses. God didn’t abandon humanity to endure only the thorns of life’s troubles, but He gave us an abundance of things like hope, joy, peace, and love to bloom right alongside the thorns. Sickness and wounds carry the hope of healing; broken relationships carry the hope of restoration; and death carries the hope of eternal life with The Lord and with those we loved in this life. But it’s not always easy to focus on the hope, no matter how wonderful the blooms. Sometimes, the thorns just hurt a little too much.
Today, I talked to a brother in Christ who has been diagnosed with cancer. I so love this brother, and his wife is like a big sister for me, and that thorn really stuck deep. My “fix-it” personality wants to have all the answers yesterday, so that neither of these 2 friends will have to endure the pain of this dreaded disease. But I’m not a doctor or scientist who can fix this, so I turned to the biggest rose on my branch of thorns: Our Creator and Father, and the ability to bring Him our thorns in prayer. I prayed before we ever hung up the phone, and I felt God’s Presence with all of us as we called out to Him with this heavy need.
Now, it’s almost bedtime, and my heart is still reaching out to The God of Healing and Comfort. I seek His peace and strength for my friends, and for myself and my husband. We’ve been through it ourselves when my husband got his diagnosis, and I’m thankful for the dialysis that is now keeping him alive while we wait to see if God has other miracles planned for us. We got a big one when the growth beyond the kidney that showed up on imaging was no longer there when the doctor went in for surgery. When he removed the kidney, all the cancer went with it, and he was shocked. He told me he looked and looked but could find no more cancer. I was so overwhelmed just knowing my husband survived that I didn’t even realize the answer to prayer and to the doctor’s statement before surgery that he’d like to see a miracle. But I know now. I know I serve a God who can and will do miracles, and I’m still looking for more of them to show up on my thorn bush. I welcome prayers from readers as well.
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For the Sake of the Righteous
In our homes, if we have a family member that routinely violates the law and the respect of other household members, we will usually find that our households feel like places of chaos and unhappiness. Even when that family member no longer lives with the family, the strain is heavy. We call for interventions. If we pray, we call our prayer-warrior friends and ask them to bring the situation to God. We plead for God to have mercy on the soul of the disobedient one, but we also pray that somehow the rebellion will stop, so we can have peace. And in those situations where a positive change takes place, we are grateful for whatever it took to bring it about and for having our families back in order and harmony.
In today’s reading from Genesis 18:15 through Genesis 18:33, we learn the real reason the three men stopped by Abraham’s homestead; to bring peace to a chaotic situation. There was a cry of help rising from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. People created in the image of God were in trouble. They were victimized. They were miserable. Like Abel’s blood crying to God from the ground, this creation was crying to The Creator from the depths of misery. And Yahveh God grabbed a couple of warrior angels and headed to earth to deal with it. As the story continues, God talks with the angels about letting Abraham in on the details of the mission. God said He wanted to include Abraham in His plans because of the strong future he had in front of him. Maybe God also thought it would be good to share with Abraham out of respect for his nephew’s family that still lived there–especially since the mission included the destruction of the city because of the abundance of wickedness.
Now Abraham, like any loving family member, begins to plead with God on behalf of the possibility of righteous men having to pay a price for the deeds of the wicked. He even says to God, “Far be it from You to destroy the righteous with the wicked.” Of course, he was likely imagining that Lot and his family were righteous since they were raised up that way, and maybe he even thought they were stuck in the depths of that horrible place. So begins the conversation between God and Abraham about just how many righteous men would have to dwell there in order for the city to be saved.
Eventually, Abraham brings the number all the way down to ten people. God tells him that even if there are ten righteous people there, He will spare the city. Of course, we know the outcome of that, so we can be sure there were not even ten righteous men living there. It was like the wrong side of the tracks on the wrong side of the tracks–all the wickedness gathered into one bad place. But even with all that evil, God would have been prepared to have mercy on them if He could have found ten people who could lift Him up as a light in the darkness. He is just that merciful. And He let Abraham pose scenario after scenario until even Abraham knew the situation in the place was hopeless.
There are days when I look at the behaviors of people that just don’t make sense, and I know God must be sparing this whole earth just for the righteous on its face. I know He is strained at the cry of the victims against those who kill, steal, and destroy for whatever evil reason they can justify–and often just because they don’t care. I know God grieves even more than I do over the pain of the righteous and the innocent as we live out these last days where men are calling good evil and evil good. And I know God longs to bring those who love Him to that promised place of eternity with Him. But, for now, we have to trust that He is sparing the earth because there are still enough righteous people who follow their Creator and will bring His light to a lost and dying world. Let us ask Him to continue to help us to always be ready to give an answer for the hope that is within us. And if we have unsaved family and friends, we can praise God for His mercy as He delays His return and His judgment for the sake of the righteous.
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Circumcision of Truth
Today’s reading has some pretty sensitive topics, but it’s still a part of biblical history, so we will trudge on together. Our complete reading is from Genesis 34:1 through Genesis 35:11, and it begins with the story of a man, Hamor the Hivite, who has fallen in love with Dinah, the daughter of Leah and Jacob. Now, Hamor’s son, Shechem, was also in love with Dinah and demanded that his father go get her for him.
Before Shechem shared his intentions with his father, Hamor apparently tried to win Dinah’s affections and did not succeed, so he raped and humiliated her. And then I’m wondering if maybe he thought he could hide the situation is why he was willing to go to Jacob to ask for Dinah’s hand. But Jacob knew what had happened to Dinah, though since his sons were not available, he held his tongue. When Simeon and Levi, the sons of Jacob, came in, Jacob told them the situation, and they made plans for payback.
hen Hamor offered the women of his village in exchange for the women of Jacob’s people, the boys told them they would accept the offer only if all their men would become circumcised as the men in Jacob’s family were. When Hamor brought the news to his men, he told them he thought it was a good idea because the intermarriage of the families would mean they would inherit all the riches of Jacob’s people. Both camps, it seems, circumcised the importance of truth from their lives and communications.
Finally, when Hamor’s people got circumcised physically, the sons of Jacob waited about three days until the men were in excruciating pain. Then, they took advantage of the pain and weakness of the men and attacked and killed them. After they did this, the rest of Jacob’s people and servants plundered the Hivites and took their cattle and possessions. But Jacob was angry with them and told them it was going to cause all the other people around, such as the Canaanites and Perizzites, to join forces and attack him.
God came to Jacob and told him to go back to Bethel and make his home there and to build an altar at the place where he first met God. Jacob told his people to get rid of all their false gods (I’m amazed that he knew they had them and didn’t make them get rid of them before) and to get ready to travel to Bethel. As they traveled, God put a fear on all the people of the lands they passed through so they would not harm Jacob or his people. Finally, Jacob built the altar God told him to build, and God met him once more. This time, he said he would not only be named Israel, but from that point on should also be called Israel.
In Chapter 35, verse 11, (in the Amplified Bible) we read, “And God said to him, I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall come from you and kings shall be born of your stock.” What a promise from a God to His people–even after they had failed to put Him first in their worship and their behaviors. I think I’ve said before how I didn’t think God showed mercy in the Old Testament, but this is one of those wonderful stories that shows He truly did show mercy in wonderful ways since the beginning. And I imagine that we only know a piece of it with this recorded history, but I’m so thankful for what He has revealed to us.
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November 20, 2013 Posted by Crystal A Murray (aka CrystalWriter) | Bible Study, Nonfiction, Torah Commentary | Adonai, Almighty, attack, Bethel, Bible, Bible Gateway, Bible reading, Bible study, circumcise, Complete Jewish Bible, Creator, crystalwriter, Dinah, false gods, Genesis, God, Hamor, Holy Bible, Israel, Jacob, Leah, Levi, Lord, Old Covenant, Old Testament, pain, Parashah, payback, Portions, rape, Scripture, Shechem, Simeon, The Complete Jewish Bible, Torah, Torah commentary, Torah Portions, Torah Reading, Word, Word of God, Word of the Lord, www.biblegateway.com, Yahveh, Yahweh | Leave a comment