The Preacher's Diary 1. Unanswered Situations
We are called to the watchtower, to avert danger from our land and our lives. Sometimes, sadly, terrible things still happen around us, causing intercessors sometimes to blame themselves for the misfortune, as though it might never have been if they had prayed more ‘properly’ or prayed ‘enough.’ There are certain swords that the watchman might see coming, of which he can raise an alarm, to which the people might or might not respond (Ezekiel 33:7-9).
Sages from the ages have often told that the look of a book does not always convey its accurate contents. A once-fooled wise man once warned wailfully that beauty was “vain” if in content it lacked the fear of the Lord; that, in the end, the good heart, more than the good face, earned true praise (Proverbs 31:30). Pretty packages sometimes come with a pomp that belies their content of woes. Hasty eyes often miss the codes of caution concealed on the charming face. That resembles the old story I wish to tell today about Herodias, the bloody Queen of Galilee.
There are multiple Biblical approaches to peacemaking, and peace is qualified. Sometimes, people have worsened the relational friction by attempting to impose on others their own conception of peace or peacemaking. Peace does not mean the naïve ‘Christly’ posture of forcing friendship with a manifest enemy, or lowering one’s guards in their presence as a fond show of ‘Christian’ trust renewed. Godliness is not stupidity. The Bible says to “put on THE WHOLE armour of God,” but tells us nowhere to put it off at any time because we feel safe (Ephesians 6:11).
I was at a church service a few days ago to be with a beloved preacher visiting town. During the service, a young woman told her touching story of a narrow rescue from the edge of an ignominious grave. She had felt so frustrated with life that she was going to kill herself. She considered several suicide options and settled for what she thought was the least painful exit out of her regretted world. She was ready with the potent poison for her dispatch that evening, then she heard music from the church. She pondered that she could, at least, go and confess to God before she took the fatal step, so she headed for the church.
Deliver me in thy righteousness, and cause ME to escape: incline thine ear unto me, and save me.
Psalm 71:2.
Two modes of preservation are highlighted in our text: deliverance and escape, both being types of salvation. God is involved in all, but to different degrees. ‘In His righteousness,’ that is, usually without reference to my rightlessness or any significant input from me, God can deliver me. At other times, however, He merely opens the door and lets me use my legs to complete the salvation process. That is, He causes ‘ME’ to consciously get myself out of the obvious danger. That is escape. Either way, God has ‘saved’ me.
Imagine that you were Prophet Hosea, a young man in church, loving God with all your heart, hardworking, in the choir and prayer departments of the house of God, with lofty dreams of your wedding day and that pretty girl in the choir that you have been eyeing, whom you would soon marry after her graduation from the university next summer, and thereafter move to your new apartment in that quiet section of town. Then it happens.
And the city shall be cursed, even it, and all that therein, to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house: because she hid the messengers that we sent.
Joshua 6:17.
Rahab was a harlot; even the Bible identified her by that appalling trade, but she was a good person at heart, and very hospitable too. She had probably been forced into the sex trade by the difficulties of life. She hid the men that came her way, and would not deliver them to harm. Every harlot is not a devil; some of them are great souls merely stained by the constraints of a hard life.
And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her.
Genesis 34:2.
That is the story of Dinah, the only known daughter of Jacob (although Genesis 34:16 speaks of “daughters”). During the 600-mile journey from Mesopotamia (where Jacob had been on exile for about twenty years) back to Canaan (as instructed by the Lord), the family passed through Shechem, a city (or “country”) that bore the same name as its iconic prince.
There is one female gender name that has entered into history with all the connotations of disdain and shame; a pretty-sounding name that no decent mother would call her loving daughter. The name is Delilah, which, according to some Bible dictionaries, means “languishing,” and by others is translated as “delicate” – the delicate one. It is next of kin to another kindred female name, Jezebel. Delilah’s story is told in the Bible book of Judges, chapter 16, in the episode that saw the strong Samson ignobly put out of service by that woman’s soft touches.
And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death (Judges 16:16).
All terrorists do not carry bombs and swords; some merely carry words. All terrorists do not blow up public planes and strike off ‘heathen’ heads; some merely blow up intangible souls and decapitate dreaded dreams. One gang bleeds the body and publicly prides itself in the goriness that we cringe at in Christian civility; the other slashes the soul in dark romantic rooms with Judas kisses. Because our ears hardly hear the cry of dying souls, because the soul bleeds a blood that mortal juries do not always see, we are prone to pamper the bloodless dangerousness of swordless terrorists while we fry those that dare to publish their bloodlines in promise of a perverted paradise. It is blind and complicit partiality, but some call it justice for the ‘weak.’
