Hear O Israel

A week-end meeting was convened with a number of learned and religious leaders to choose their favorite or self-imposed importance of an individual Sacred Scripture verse, and explain why they chose that particular text.  A further requirement would help make each selection a positive adherent for enthusiasts seeking understanding of God’s Word, which would spread the Gospel Message through others’ learning, as well.

There would be no time limit imposed upon the group, as long as they could reach their individual synopsis of choice within the ascribed weekend.  So, after a profound prayer service, each one went to their particular room and/or someplace within the center, where this session was held, and began to study, search, or just prayerfully ponder the assignment they all agreed to undertake.

Interestingly, most took the entire week-end, skillfully and in a proficient manner, an enormous amount of careful consideration as to the many choices later revealed, and the results became a very intellectual, yet eye-opening insight into sections of Scripture, even though already very familiar, shed thoughts upon areas not seen before with all the different revelations these learned people, men and women, were able to ascertain with their assorted explanations.

Some were so familiar that one would think why did one or more of these intellectuals appear to select this one or that one.  However, we may see that the Holy Spirit, in perhaps all, if not most, was at work diligently guiding the giftedness of each one’s efforts.

As I, along with others who facilitated the session, began reading over the final results of many selections and their explanations, it made me, especially, reflect on my own choice, had I been one of the participants.  It would have been Matthew’s story of the Final Judgement (Mt. 25: 31-46), and taking a comparison from Ez 34: 17, 20 wherein it says; “As for you, my sheep, says the Lord, I will judge between one sheep and another, between rams and goats.”  I believe this story reflects the real impetus that will come upon each person as to how they treated their brethren and may very well be the consideration of God’s Judgement on our willingness to treat others with respect and most of all love.

Our determinations on the most profound selections were not to show prejudicial treatment to any one participant or the selection made, just a round-table discussion of the many segments of Sacred Scripture, that make for great teaching and the need for further study of the very words that God has inspired upon His people, beginning with Genesis through the last sentence of Revelation.  

But, to our most astute consideration the one verse that made us sit up and take notice came from Deuteronomy; 6: 4: ff; “Hear O Israel!  The Lord God is our God, the Lord alone!  Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.  Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today.  Drill them into your children.  Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest.  Bind them at your wrist as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead.  Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.” 

To further this pronouncement, Moses in Deuteronomy 5: 6 ff states these words of God;  “I the Lord am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.  You shall not have other gods besides me.  You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them.  For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, inflecting punishments for their fathers’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation, but bestowing mercy, down to the thousandth generation, on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

The one person from our collection of illustrious participants made the following comment as to this choice of scripture that stood out among all the entries, signifying from the earliest writings of the Torah the profoundness of our God who withheld no admonishment to His reaching us through His chosen Servant, Moses:  

“If there ever was a series of words with meaning towards such a vibrant warning, yet a pronouncement of infectious mercy, here is that group made with harmonious clarity that even the most illiterate person could understand this God who loves his people so much that He will do whatever it takes to redeem them.  We, who are the progeny from centuries past of our predecessors, who believed in God, have learned slowly but intently the very words spoken by God and passed to us living in this modern period of history, that ancient tradition of faith that should never change the truth given us.  This truth will set us free.”