Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Unoffendable
God is wise in heart and mighty in strength; who has withstood him and remained unscathed?
Brant Hanson wrote a book which took him courage and many months to write, because he was writing a confession as a handbook. The book, Unoffendable, which addresses how anger overtakes us, became a best-seller.
So I think, is God unoffendable? Moses certainly was not, and he was God’s voice and right hand man. In stories about Moses and the Hebrews driving him crazy with their complaining and their blaming, Moses sounds pretty angry. His wife Zipporah tries to rein him in. When he lost his temper and threw down the tablets of commandments God had personally given him, she led him to their tent, where he held one piece of the broken tablet.
“Tell them what God said,” she told her husband. And he did.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, honor the Shabbat and keep it holy.
God’s commandments insist that we as created humans remember that he is the one who created us, and we cannot take liberties with either Him or with each other. Knowing that we will anyway, God incorporates a day of “rest” to remind us of who we are. Erich Fromm, psychologist but not a rabbi, has this to say about Shabbat:
It is the only strictly religious command in the Ten Commandments, and all prophets insisted on it being kept. The Shabbat is a day of truce in the human battle with the world. On the Shabbat one lives as if one has nothing, pursuing no aim except being, that is, expressing one’s essential powers: praying, tidying, eating, drinking, singing, making love.
Shabbat is a day on which time is defeated, when pure being rules. Shabbat’s historical predecessor, the Babylonian Shapatu, was a day of sadness and fear. The modern Sunday is a day of fun, consumption, and running away from oneself. The Shabbat is not escapist in either direction, but a universal day of harmony and peace. (p 51 etc)
In the wilderness for forty years, the Hebrews begin to become a nation – learning to govern themselves and humble themselves before God, who never gets caught napping. Even when God threatens to kill all of his people, he quickly relents when Moses (who said he was an anger freak?) begs him for mercy.
God’s unoffendability seems flexible. He rages, then relents. And when we do the same, he watches us with patience and love rather than disdain. Even when I’m angry with Him, maybe even especially when I’m angry with Him, God’s mercy is infinite.
Will you work wonders for the dead? Do they declare your mercy in the grave? Why, O Lord, do you reject me? Let my prayer come before you, Lord.
Psalm 88, song of the forsaken, might be soaked in self pity, but it also reflects how all of us feel at times in this sometimes lonely, exasperated life. Despair waits at the gate, ready to devour. That God allows me to say those things to him, wow! And as always happens when I give it time, I come back around.
With the Lord, a thousand years is like a day.
I watch kids of any young age rant and rave, then laugh and sing. Moments apart.
Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in theKingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives also me.
I’m amazed that after the last verse of Psalm 88 (the darkness is my closest friend), the first verse of Psalm 89 uncovers the sun.
I shall sing of the Lord’s great love forever!
(Job 9, Psalm 88, Psalm 103, Matthew 18)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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