Sabbath Messages > Sabbath Message: March 12, 2005
Good Sabbath
March 12, 2005
Reading is a wonderful habit. Before I close my eyes for sleep, I read so that my mind's curiosity may also sleep.Lately, I've been studying Edwin Black's fine history of Iraq's beginnings and culture. It is the 7000-year history of war, profit and conflict, "Banking on Baghdad". This history would inform any American leader of the eccentricities of these peoples and place, educating the reader as to the never-ending hatred, slaughter and cruelty of this "cradle" of civilization, Mesopotamia. It was made up of competing city-states, each ruled by its king, developing its own gods, language and culture.
If this was the cradle of civilization, it was also the creation of the devil, his playground and grand experiment honing what was to come to the world. War was its cottage industry and no one was protected except the ruler's vanity. It was and remains the quicksand of human nature with which God has struggled for so many centuries. To comprehend this mess called, Iraq, we must engage in personal research so that we are prepared for the consequences of our actions and ignorant arrogance.
"If you want to raise a man from mud and filth, do not think it enough to keep standing on top and reaching down to give a helping hand.You must go all the way down yourself, down into mud and filth and take hold of him with strong hands and pull him and yourself into the light." (Solomon ben Meir ha-Levi of Karlin)
"Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the fear it inspires, every man would swallow his neighbor alive." (Ethics of the Fathers, chap 3. par 2)
Did God pay attention as He was creating human nature?
And by whom are we educated? A new study shows that the average child (8 to 18) watches electronic media 8 1/2 hours daily! There appear to be no rules in households; when there are rules, there is little enforcement. I believe that being busy is the devil's best helper as it leaves little time to teach the real values of either God or morality. There is little clarity to any subject and yet clarity is a guiding principle of society.
In the beginnings of the Michael Jackson trial, which begins to dominate the airwaves, we find a person who is ambiguous, unclear, eccentric, comes to trial late--wearing pajama bottoms, and has had so much personal plastic surgery as to defy classification; and now, I am told, spends tens of millions above his huge earnings. We shall find a value system that is so unclear and shocking that we may choose to ignore it or become obsessed by it.
O God of mystery
Did You invent ambiguity
Or was it hatched by the devil?
When do we know what is
or what can be?
When do we have foundation
upon which we can become stable
Or are we doomed by ambiguity
forever--
Waiting for the next shaft of wind
To knock us off our comfortable perch
of temporary truth
Until the next Hubble searches
emptiness
To locate the real yesterday?
So as you continue to find a few precious moments to do what you really should do to raise a child or your own standard of knowledge, know that it is the only hope that we can survive as a deserving peoples of at least this planet. Ignorance waits for discovery, a most noble goal.
Take some delight in your Sabbath, for the mind and soul need clarity, hiding behind the fogbank of innocence and temporary truth. The search is worthwhile for it is the necessity that dissipates all fog.
sandy
