Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Summary of Israel Subjugated by Egypt

I just finished the first fourteen chapters of Exodus, which covers the enslavement of Israel, the wonders performed by Moses in Egypt, and the eventual redemption of God’s chosen people. I wanted to pause at this moment to reflect on some of the themes and lessons from these stories. I will do this over the next few days, then I will briefly pause my scriptural analysis as I publish one or two spiritual studies that I have been wanting to do, after which I will resume my scripture study with Exodus 15.

Forgetting God)

At the beginning of Exodus we heard how a new Pharaoh arose “which knew not Joseph.” Looking back, I believe the phrase “which knew not” has been a theme throughout all this story of Egypt. The Egyptians forgot both the debt of gratitude that they owed to the Israelite prince who saved them during the famine, and also his God who had proven Himself to be Lord and Master over all.

By forgetting who the Israelites were and who their God was, the Egyptians felt emboldened to take extreme liberties on the chosen people, which in turn would bring terrible retribution on their own heads. Whenever a people forget God and His fundamental laws of good they inevitably come to dabble in matters that they don’t understand. They start digging out the foundation of a wall, completely ignorant of how it supports the great edifice that hangs overhead. When they are crushed, they will be completely surprised but also completely culpable.

An Unexpected Protection)

At certain points in their history, the Israelites were conquered because they had abandoned God and had to be chastened back into faithfulness. In the case of their subjugation to Egypt, though, we are not told that such was the case. We are given reasons for the conquering, and none of them are morally justified, so as far as we know the Israelites were still an innocent and faithful people, and Egypt wronged them without cause.

If that was the case, then it occurs to me that one reason why God may have permitted this travesty was that it actually served the purpose of protecting the Israelites during a vulnerable period. We know that while they were in Egypt the Israelites grew from 70 souls to approximately 2 million. We also know that there were various hostile tribes and kingdoms growing to power in Canaan while they were being held captive in Egypt. It may be that if the Israelites had stayed in Canaan and multiplied there, that one of the other kingdoms would have seen them as a growing threat and just wiped them out. Being enslaved meant that they would have been protected from all the other worldly powers, guarded by the mighty armies of Egypt, allowing them to develop to the point that they could face those other powers as equals.

***

This concludes my retrospect on the enslavement of Israel in Egypt, tomorrow I will continue with a summary of Moses’s miracles and the liberation of Israel.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Personal Commitment: Month 10

February’s Review

Well…I’m feeling very embarrassed as I write this review for last month’s commitment. There were a few times this month that I realized I had slipped from my commitment and tried to refresh it. But I did so from my memory of what that commitment was, and just now as I sat down to write this review I realized that I had been remembering it incorrectly!

I was remembering January’s commitment: doubling down on two-hour check-ins to ground myself to the moment. Which is still a great practice, and one that I do want to continue with, but that’s just not the commitment I actually made for February!

For February I had wanted to establish a ritual of prayer and then doing the first good thing I could think of. The intention was to pair my faith with action, and thus invite God’s spirit into my life. I had wanted to do this every morning, every time I changed my setting, and whenever I had felt like I had slipped from my spiritual connection.

But given that I didn’t even remember this commitment, I really didn’t follow it.

March’s Commitment)

Well, I’ll just try it again. I knew this practice would take some time to become regular habit. Missteps on the path of improvement were to be expected. The proper way forward is to pick myself up, dust myself off, and continue as before.

So for March I will be renewing my commitment for February. I am going to pair it with a new reminder, though. I have set an alarm on my phone that will go off every Monday and instruct me to go and read my commitment, just to be sure that I am remembering the plan correctly and acting on it.

On April 1st I’ll let you know how I did at actually remembering the commitment, how I did at performing it, and what I saw as a result of doing so.

Thank you.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Virtue of Remembering- John 14:26, Luke 24:31-32

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.
And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?

COMMENTARY

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, he shall bring all things to your remembrance
And their eyes were opened; And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us
We have discussed how difficult it can be for us to remember the things of God, to keep the fire of Him burning in our hearts. There have been many times where I have been able to remember a past spiritual event clearly in my mind, but just haven’t known how to bring back the feelings of the heart that went with it.
And frankly, I think it is because I can’t. A sign to the disciples that they had truly met the resurrected Christ was how he brought the fire back into their hearts, something they had known before in his presence, and which only he was able to return to them.
And just before his departure, Jesus had explained to his disciples that they would be given the Holy Ghost, whose express purpose was to bring back to them the things they could not bring back to themselves. It is essential that we return to the fire that we have felt before, but we are not supposed to try and force those feelings back into us. It doesn’t work that way. It does not return by our own power, only by His grace. Thus what is required of us is simply to remain open to receiving that presence that is already beside us. We must permit it to stir our souls back to Him again.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Virtue of Remembering- Isaiah 40:31, Isaiah 41:10, 13

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.

COMMENTARY

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength
Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee
Our natural state is to be deeply aware of our own limitations. We are intimately familiar with all the things that we cannot do, for we live within those constraints every moment of every day.
What is unnatural, then, is to remember the power that exists outside of ourselves. It takes genuine effort to keep in remembrance the influence of God, and how it can make the impossible things become possible.
Thus there is no shame in saying that we have difficultly remembering to make use of God’s help in our lives. Of course we do. But this tendency of ours has to be fought against, because otherwise life takes us into waters that are too deep for us and we start to drown in poor choices.
God, Himself, knows that we tend to forget Him, and it is for that very reason that He has seeded reminders of Himself all throughout our lives. We find the reminders to lean into God through the scriptures, in church sermons, in the majesties of nature, and in the pricking of our own conscience. Of all the things that we must remind ourselves of on a regular basis, the first must be the reality of Him.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Need for Refreshing- Psalm 143:8 (GNT), Lamentations 3:21-23 (NLT)

Remind me each morning of your constant love, for I put my trust in you. My prayers go up to you; show me the way I should go.

Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:
The faithful love of the LORD never ends! His mercies never cease.
Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.

COMMENTARY

Remind me each morning of your constant love
We have just discussed our need to regularly recommit ourselves to God. We often forget the feelings of the past, and thus need to establish new connections to replace those which have grown stale.
Similarly, we also need to regularly be reminded of God’s love for us. Suppose He were to one time say to us “I love you, and I will love you forever,” and then never again profess His devotion to us. Though those one-time words should theoretically suffice, they never would. A single proclamation for eternity grows hollow within us over time. That is just our nature. What we need is a constant reaffirming of just how much we mean to Him.

The faithful love of the LORD never ends! His mercies never cease.
Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.
Ours is a transitory existence. We eat, but later again we hunger. We sleep, but later again we are fatigued. God professes His love, but later again we are doubtful. As a kind and patient parent, God does not despise our forgetfulness. He reminds of it us over and over, the same as we do to our own children. Each morning He is ready to tell us that He is just as committed to us as He was the day before. We feel His renewed pledge, and it rejuvenates to remake our own pledges as well.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Need for Refreshing- Isaiah 53:6, Deuteronomy 6:6, 8-9, 2 Peter 1:12 (NLT)

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

Therefore, I will always remind you about these things—even though you already know them and are standing firm in the truth you have been taught.

COMMENTARY

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way
I do believe that when most of us make a commitment, we really do intend to hold fast to it. People do not get married intending for it to end in divorce, or sign a contract intending to breach it, or enter baptism intending to return to their old sins. And yet they do. All the time. We are a wayward flock and always have been.
There is a very simple reason for this behavior. We are temporal beings constrained by time. Though we have the memory of the past and the hope of the future, we can only ever live in the present. Memories and hopes can influence us, but the immediacy of now will often drown them out. Thus we may have felt very strongly back when we made marriage vows, signed contracts, and entered baptism; but the weight of those moments do not last forever. Our every vow comes with an expiration date.
If you have noticed this tendency to wander, know that it is not a failing in you as an individual. It is a universal, and unavoidable, failing of the entire human race. We may not forget what we have promised, but we do forget the feelings we held when we made them.

And these word shall be bound for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house.
Therefore, I will always remind you about these things
God is well aware of this forgetful nature in us, and as such has always taught his people to regularly refresh their vows. He instructed the Israelites to bind the words of the laws on their hands, in little boxes on their foreheads, and on the posts of their doors. He had them do this so that they would see constant reminders of what they had been called to. The disciples of Jesus were given the Sacrament, and told to come together oft to repeat that commitment ceremony.
Yes, our hearts stray, but we can choose every day to recommit them. Yes, our vows come with expiration dates, but we can extend them with new ones. When I keep the commandments today, it is not because of a commitment I made once years ago, it is because of the one I made last Sunday when I partook of the sacrament, and this morning when I said my prayers. We are a forgetful race, but we can remind ourselves.