Tag: Numbers

Psalm 78:11
They forgot his works and the wonders that he had shown them.

Reflection: The Blandness of Hell
By John Tillman

Hell, to C.S. Lewis, is a bore.

In his work Seeing Hell through the Reason and Imagination of C. S. Lewis, Douglas Beyer admires Lewis’s improvement on the typical portrayal of Hell as more interesting than Heaven.

“One of Lewis’ remarkable achievements is that his writing reverses this [the portrayal of Hell]. His vivid imagination pictures Hell with less fire and torture and more dreariness, boredom, and grayness. He makes us see it as not only a place suitable for the Hitlers and Charles Mansons of this world, but a distinct possibility for ‘respectable’ people like us. He does this without making Hell the least bit interesting. Heaven, on the other hand, is a place of rich variety in contrast with the dull monotony of Hell.”

Hell is not only monotonous in its blandness but is not designed for the human mind. Beyer continues:

“The saved go to a place prepared for them, while the damned go to a place never made for men at all. To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being in earth; to enter Hell, is to be banished from humanity.”

Hell is a place of stagnation and sameness. Heaven is a place of creativity, art, celebration, and love. Hell is merely selfishness made manifest in the extreme.

Those who go to Hell, do so on their own. God lays no hand upon them—merely pushes the door open for them to enter and politely allows them to close it behind.

“The doors of Hell are locked on the inside,” C.S. Lewis says in The Problem of Pain:

“I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of Hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man ‘wishes’ to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved.”

“The blessed,” Lewis concludes, “forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free.”

In Heaven, we are drawn closer to God and there find joy and the communion of the saints. In contrast, Hell is a place of self-exile in which the only thing to grow closer to is the misery that we brought with us. When Sartre said “Hell is other people,” he was too broad. Hell is our self alone.

Prayer: The Greeting
Our sins are stronger than we are, but you will blot them out. — Psalm 65.3

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Numbers 33 (Listen – 4:53) 
Psalm 78,1-37 (Listen – 7:12)

This Weekend’s Readings
Numbers 34 (Listen – 2:59) Psalm 78,38-72 (Listen – 7:12)
Numbers 35 (Listen – 4:41) Psalm 79 (Listen – 1:50)

Thank You!
Thank you for reading and a huge thank you to those who donate to our ministry, keeping The Park Forum ad-free and enabling us to continue to produce fresh content. Every year our donors help us produce over 100,000 words of free devotionals. Follow this link to support our readers.

Read more about Choosing Hell
All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice, there could be no Hell. Those who seek, find. To those who knock, it is opened.

Read more about The Gospel is an Uprising
Christ portrays himself as a violent thief, breaking into the house of the strong man, Satan, destroying his defenses, and plundering his possessions.

Psalm 77.18
The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightnings lighted up the world; the earth trembled and shook.

From John:
Once again, we will look back at a post highlighting Jewish scholar, Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel was instrumental in the efforts of the civil rights movement, working alongside Christian pastors who stood for the cause and is an important theological voice for Christians to be familiar with.

Reflection: Radical Amazement
By Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)

Among the many things that religious tradition holds in store for us is a legacy of wonder. The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.

Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward history and nature. One attitude is alien to God’s spirit: taking things for granted, regarding events as a natural course of things. To find an approximate cause of a phenomenon is no answer to his ultimate wonder. He knows that there are laws that regulate the course of natural processes; he is aware of the regularity and pattern of things. However, such knowledge fails to mitigate his sense of perpetual surprise at the fact that there are facts at all. Looking at the world he would say, “This is the Lord’s doing, it is marvelous in our eyes” (Psalms 118:23).

As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information, but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.

Awareness of the divine begins with wonder. It is the result of what man does with his higher incomprehension. The greatest hindrance to such awareness is our adjustment to conventional notions, to mental cliches. Wonder or radical amazement, the state of maladjustment to words and notions, is, therefore, a prerequisite for an authentic awareness of that which is.

Radical amazement has a wider scope than any other act of man. While any act of perception or cognition has as its object a selected segment of reality, radical amazement refers to all of reality; not only to what we see, but also to the very act of seeing as well as to our own selves, to the selves that see and are amazed at their ability to see.

*Abridged and adapted from Between God and Man and God in Search of Man by Rabbi Hershel J. Matt.

Prayer: The Greeting
Blessed is the Lord! For he has heard the voice of my prayer. — Psalm 28.7

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Numbers 32 (Listen – 5:22) 
Psalm 77 (Listen – 2:12)

Thank You!
Thank you for reading and a huge thank you to those who donate to our ministry, keeping The Park Forum ad-free and enabling us to continue to produce fresh content. Every year our donors help us produce over 100,000 words of free devotionals. Follow this link to support our readers.

Read more about Beyond the Mystery is Mercy
The sense of the ineffable, the awareness of the grandeur and mystery of living, is shared by all men.

https://theparkforum.org/843-acres/beyond-the-mystery-is-mercy/

Read more about The Sense of the Ineffable
Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.

Psalm 68.11
Your procession, God, has come into view,
   the procession of my God and King into the sanctuary.
In front are the singers, after them the musicians;
   with them are the young women playing the timbrels.

Reflection: Too Good Not to Be True
By John Tillman

I have personally always been drawn to the unusual stories of the Bible and I pray that many of you have benefited from an extended look at Balaam this week.

I worked with some writing partners on a children’s Bible teaching curriculum for many years. But before that curriculum, my partners had worked on another curriculum with a major Christian publisher. My partners wanted to tell the story of Balaam, but got pushback from the publishers, “Donkeys don’t talk and we don’t want to confuse the children.” My friends responded, “Does that mean we can’t teach Lazarus because dead men don’t come out of the grave?” The publisher eventually got their way and the Balaam lesson was cut.

It was a deep feeling of accomplishment when we eventually put a lesson on Balaam in the curriculum we wrote together later.

In his book, Telling the Truth, Frederick Buechner challenges preachers not to shy away from the fantastic and the miraculous, but to tell the truth in all its childishness.

“The preacher is apt to preach the gospel with the high magic taken out, the deep mystery reduced to a manageable size.

The wild and joyful promise of the gospel is reduced to promises more easily kept. The peace that passeth all understanding is reduced to peace that anybody can understand. The faith that can move mountains and raise the dead becomes faith that can help make life bearable until death ends it. Eternal life becomes a metaphor for the way the good a man does lives after him.

Let the preacher stretch our imagination and strain our credulity and make our jaws drop because the sad joke of it is that if he does not, then of all people he is almost the only one left who does not…

The joke of it is that often it is the preacher who as steward of the wildest mystery of them all is the one who hangs back, prudent, cautious, hopelessly mature and wise to the last when no less than Saint Paul tells him to be a fool for Christ’s sake, no less than Christ tells him to be a child for his own and the kingdom’s sake.

Let the preacher tell the truth…Let him preach this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true.” 

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
My eyes are upon the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me. — Psalm 101.6

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Numbers 25 (Listen – 2:20) 
Psalm 68 (Listen – 4:26)

Thank You!
Thank you for reading and a huge thank you to those who donate to our ministry, keeping The Park Forum ad-free and enabling us to continue to produce fresh content. Every year our donors help us produce over 100,000 words of free devotionals. Follow this link to support our readers.

Read more about Balaams and Balaks
Balaam is not concerned with whether what the king wants is right or moral. He does not care about reconciling men or nations to God. Balaam’s prophecies are for sale.

Read more about The Prophet of Profit
Despite his close relationship with God and his ability to hear God speak Balaam seems to show the Lord no loyalty, reverence, or love.

Numbers 24.10-14
“I summoned you to curse my enemies, but you have blessed them these three times….I said I would reward you handsomely, but the Lord has kept you from being rewarded.”

Balaam answered Balak, “Did I not tell the messengers you sent me, ‘Even if Balak gave me all the silver and gold in his palace, I could not do anything of my own accord, good or bad, to go beyond the command of the Lord—and I must say only what the Lord says’? Now I am going back to my people, but come, let me warn you of what this people will do to your people in days to come.”

Psalm 66.16-19
Come and hear, all you who fear God;
   let me tell you what he has done for me.
I cried out to him with my mouth;
   his praise was on my tongue.
If I had cherished sin in my heart,
   the Lord would not have listened;
but God has surely listened
   and has heard my prayer.

Reflection: Balaam’s Success
By John Tillman

If all one ever read of Balaam was Numbers 22-24, one might think of him as a somewhat unwilling prophet. After all, he blesses Israel three times, rather than curse them as he was hired to do. In doing this he angers Balak and Balak cancels his planned payment. If we aren’t careful, we could mistake Balaam for someone who, in the end, honorably delivered God’s message despite relational and financial loss.

One could attempt to make a comparison to Jonah. Like Jonah, Balaam attempts to do the opposite of what God commands. Both prophets’ travels get interrupted by a life threatening event. Jonah and Balaam both have a miraculous intervention by an animal. Balaam is run off the road three times. Jonah is in the belly of the fish for three days. Jonah is reluctant to see God’s message accepted. Balaam is reluctant to give up his attempts to curse Israel. But the comparison falls flat.

The rest of scripture makes it clear that Balaam did nothing honorably. Multiple scriptures testify that God, through his power, overcame what Balaam attempted. Balaam never gave up helping Balak to defeat and destroy Israel. Although Balak dismisses Balaam without payment in this chapter, it is clear from the rest of scripture that their prophet-for-hire relationship was maintained.

Every other mention of Balaam remarks on either his deception of the Israelites or his attempts at monetary gain by betraying them.

In Balaam’s last mention in scripture, John records in Revelation that Balaam tried a backdoor method to curse the Israelites. After being unable to curse the Israelites directly, as he was asked by Balak, Balaam coached Balak on a conspiracy to tempt Israel to sins that their culture was prone to.

Balaam failed to curse the Israelites, but he succeeded in tempting the Israelites to curse themselves with sins. Balaam’s strategy of people-pleasing pandering to powerful politicians is still alive today. So are his methods of deceit and temptation.

The Israelites’ culture was most susceptible to the sexual temptations of ancient fertility cults, In our culture, sexuality might have less of a sensual pull than financial sins. Greed is the fertility god of our age and our culture is addicted to it.

No matter what sins or idols we are tempted with, may we approach God humbly, seeking repentance and redemption through Christ.

Prayer: The Morning Psalm
It is better to rely on the Lord than to put any trust in rulers. All the ungodly encompass me; in the name of the Lord I will repel them. — Psalm 118.9-10

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Numbers 24 (Listen – 3:37) 
Psalm 66-67 (Listen – 2:44)

Thank You!
Thank you for reading and a huge thank you to those who donate to our ministry, keeping The Park Forum ad-free and enabling us to continue to produce fresh content. Every year our donors help us produce over 100,000 words of free devotionals. Follow this link to support our readers.

Read more about Lamenting Materialism :: A Guided Prayer
In ancient agrarian society if you worshiped a sun god or a fertility goddess or a god of weather or a god of bountiful harvest you were worshiping a god of financial success. It is akin to our worship of stock performance or financial forecasts or political economic policies.

Read more about The Idol of Immorality, Impurity, and Greed
We are correct when we assess idolatry’s primitive nature. Where we are wrong is in thinking that our modernity exempts us from its allure.