Matters of the Heart
Bob Wickizer
Deuteronomy 30:9-14
After driving through Dallas and meeting a friend there Thursday, I woke up at home early Friday to hear the terrible news that our land of the free and home of the brave is being destroyed from within by fear and loathing. Take a fearful person and put a weapon in their hands: You have a recipe for a disaster. Teach a group of people to fear, give them weapons and you have a militia whose sole purpose is to convert their fears into the suffering of others.
To understand the choices we have before us, you have to know a little bit about the heart, or at least what the ancient Israelites thought about it. For them the heart was not just a muscular organ in the body that pumped blood. The heart was the physical place on your body when you felt various emotions so it was considered the source of our feelings. From there it wasn't a big leap to consider the heart as the source of our thoughts and our wisdom. We still maintain vestiges of these ideas at Valentine's Day every year when we give each other heart-shaped cards and candies. The heart is the thing that helps you make decisions for good or ill.
Now we must travel to a high point on the east bank of the Jordan River overlooking a broad valley where Moses addresses the Israelites in his final words to them before they go down to the valley and cross over the river to the Promised Land. What does Moses tell a people that he freed from slavery only to remain in the desert forty years waiting for God's next word? Moses won't be allowed to enter the Promised Land because of his own shortcomings but he must tell them something vital, something that will stick with them. This is his farewell speech to them. The new generation out there never experienced the parting of the Red Sea, Pharaoh's chariots drowning, or the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day. The new generation Moses addresses has only known the 613 commandments of the law in Levitic ...
Bob Wickizer
Deuteronomy 30:9-14
After driving through Dallas and meeting a friend there Thursday, I woke up at home early Friday to hear the terrible news that our land of the free and home of the brave is being destroyed from within by fear and loathing. Take a fearful person and put a weapon in their hands: You have a recipe for a disaster. Teach a group of people to fear, give them weapons and you have a militia whose sole purpose is to convert their fears into the suffering of others.
To understand the choices we have before us, you have to know a little bit about the heart, or at least what the ancient Israelites thought about it. For them the heart was not just a muscular organ in the body that pumped blood. The heart was the physical place on your body when you felt various emotions so it was considered the source of our feelings. From there it wasn't a big leap to consider the heart as the source of our thoughts and our wisdom. We still maintain vestiges of these ideas at Valentine's Day every year when we give each other heart-shaped cards and candies. The heart is the thing that helps you make decisions for good or ill.
Now we must travel to a high point on the east bank of the Jordan River overlooking a broad valley where Moses addresses the Israelites in his final words to them before they go down to the valley and cross over the river to the Promised Land. What does Moses tell a people that he freed from slavery only to remain in the desert forty years waiting for God's next word? Moses won't be allowed to enter the Promised Land because of his own shortcomings but he must tell them something vital, something that will stick with them. This is his farewell speech to them. The new generation out there never experienced the parting of the Red Sea, Pharaoh's chariots drowning, or the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day. The new generation Moses addresses has only known the 613 commandments of the law in Levitic ...
There are 6394 characters in the full content. This excerpt only shows a 2000 character sample of the full content.
Price: $5.99 or 1 credit
