10.8.24 ~ Climbing the Stairs of Repentance

Good morning!

The Fall Feast season is all about repentance and intimate closeness. It's about identifying with the past nation of Israel, a nation in exile, a nation that has gone through terrible trauma and finds its national character shattered. It is no longer in its land, it is dispersed throughout the nations, and somehow, it manages to find its way back to God...sound familiar?

All of creation longs for this return and it's incredibly heartwarming to think about us as God's people returning and God returning to Him. A time when everyone loves everyone else...truly an amazing time.

Commercial: Last night's study: Returning to God until You Arrive (Duet. 30:1-3) 

When we read these verses, at first glance, they just read like a badly-written Hallmark card. You’ve got all of these nice-sounding phrases thrown together, but what’s the actual message here (Deut. 30:1-3)? If this section of Scripture is supposed to be an instruction manual for how to return to God, then how do we actually take this advice? What are the concrete steps? In order to see the concrete steps, we need to proceed in slow motion, like climbing stairs, taking each step one at a time.  and when you start to do that, you find that there are actually seven stages in this climb to higher grounds.

Over the next several days, let's climb higher to step into the most intimate Fall Feast season possible.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Here we go :-) Open your Bible and read Deuteronomy 30:1 from our Torah portion last week.

And it will be, when all these things come upon you the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you will return yourself to your heart, among all the nations where the Lord your God has banished you

This phrase isn’t easy to understand, but here’s how we make sense of it. If we think about the Song of Moses (Deut. 32) we see that the words to this song are all about cognition, recognizing.

As we've seen in our studies this week, there was this terrible falling out between God and the people that led to exile, and the people were supposed to figure out that they were the ones who took the first step backward. But what happens after we figure that out? Sure, you know that we bear the responsibility for the deterioration of the relationship, but what do we do about it? Unfortunately, as with human relationships, just because you know something doesn’t mean that you can act on it. There’s a heart involved. It’s not as cut and dry as it might seem to the mind.

That, I think, is what’s going on in this verse. The mind cognizes (is that a word?), it grasps the truth, and it presents
its verdict to the heart. That’s what it means to return yourself to your heart...and that’s Stage One in climbing the stairs of repentance, of coming back to God.

Have a wonderful third day of the week!

Shalom

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