About Thirst and Seek
I believe that Yahweh’s will can be known.
And that we can encounter His will in the literature left to us by the Israelites and Judahites of yore.
After all, this literature was born out of a people who thirsted, desperately so, to be in perpetual relationship with Him.
To be convinced of this, one needs merely to read through the great collection of prayer-poems.
While written by many people at many different times and places,
covering such variety of genres from thanksgiving and praise to dirge and lament, they all have one thing in common;
The complete and uncompromising devotion to Yahweh,
and the unshakable desire to walk with Him,
to bask in His light,
and find protection and shelter in the shade of His wings.
However, while being worthy of our attention and our study- our adoration, even- this literature is the work of Man.
And to place any of it atop an altar and worship it in place of Yahweh, our Almighty-God, is to blaspheme.
That is not to say that we do not have, within this literature, the Word-of-God.
For within it we have the prophecies and oracles of such Spiritual Greats as Yeshayahu, Amos, and Hoshea of the First Temple period,
each of whom tapped into such profound and eternal truths.
Yet, even if Yahweh truly singled them out and spoke to them and through them,
it has been Fallible-Man who has been in possession and control of the written word ever since.
And alongside the eternal and the profound, one also encounters the temporal, the satirical, the profane.
How, therefore, to approach this literature?
The answer is no different from any literature to ever have been written;
To read with humility, with an open-heart, with a critical-eye, and with prayer to Yahweh to help us discern when one of the ancient prophets, poets, or storytellers of yore was truly attuned to His will; And when- genuine and Holy as one’s intent might have been- he was not.
Before “The Bible,” there was no Bible. Yet Yahweh was still worshiped.
And the Israelites and Judahites argued and debated, for the sake of heaven, the great questions that burden us today.
Who is Yahweh? What is His Nature? What is the nature of His relationship to the world? To Man? To Israel?
What is His will? Does He have a plan?
The literature they have left us is a collection of literature in which Man attempted to answer these questions and others.
They neither saw each others’, nor their own words as infallible. Nor did they hesitate to re-write and change or embellish earlier attempts.
In this space, I will try to follow in their footsteps.
At least once a week, I will reflect on a passage of the ancient writings that some thought worth preserving,
either sharing my own reactions and questions to the passages as we currently have them,
or else will attempt to "correct" them, so that they more accurately reflect the mind of Yahweh-
as I, acknowledging my own fallibility- currently understand it.
I approach this endeavor with fear and trembling on one hand, but also with the unshakable conviction that
When Yahweh speaks,
we are duty-bound to listen -
with open, thirsting hearts, and seeking, humble minds.
And most importantly, to act in accordance with the Divine Will.
May Yahweh be with me in this; May He be with us all, and grant us the ability to walk with Him all the days of our lives.