A Love Story, Part 4: Guilty

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When Khriein arrived the next morning, he was met by Anthropy’s mother in tears, and her father pulling on his boots in a hurry. “She’s gone, isn’t she?” He asked, his heart dropping to the floor with a dull thud.

Her mother nodded despondently; eyes downcast.

“Don’t go,” he said to her father, “I know where to find her.” 

He kissed her parents, who had both become as dear to him as his own. With a promise to bring their daughter home, he vanished into the morning mist.

***

“Peor,” said Anthropy, thoughtfully. Running her fingers through the crystal clear water that surrounded their boat, she peered up at him. They had left in the evening and now a full moon illuminated the shore they were approaching.

“Yes?” 

“How will revenge help us?” 

He looked at her in astonishment, “If it doesn’t, nothing will. How can we go on knowing the masters are still living in comfort, with no consequences for what they did to us?”

“I know, but... what if we forgave them?” She countered. 

“Did Khriein put that in your mind?” His harsh answer disturbing the stillness of the night.

She didn’t answer and looked away. Peor knew he was right. “Look Ann,” he said, “I know you like Khriein. But did you ever discover that he was not the one who sold you? Just because he was willing to take you back doesn’t mean he didn’t benefit from your suffering. If he really had nothing to do with your enslavement, and he really cared for you, don’t you think he would be trying to do something about your trauma? Isn’t forgiveness just ignoring what you’re going through? You can’t just patch up a wound and pretend it isn’t there, you have to care for it in order for it to heal.”

She turned away again. It made too much sense, and it hurt too much to think about. 

Instead, she recalled what Ruhamah had told her about the farm. A week after they left, Master Vates released all the slaves. He told them he had a change of heart and gave them all money to help get them on their feet. The other masters were all sent away, and only Vates and his family kept the downsized farm operating. None of the masters had been punished for their cruelty.

The plan was simple. It was too much to try to hunt down every master who had worked there, and besides, they all took orders from the one who now considered himself “reformed.” They would arrive at dusk and as Anthropy kept watch, Peor would kill Vates. Under the cover of darkness, they would end the life of the man who had caused so much suffering.

She felt much better about everything the more she listened to him, so she spent much of the journey in silence, taking it all in. She convinced herself that as much as she wanted to trust Khriein, she really couldn’t, with so much evidence against him. Her “wound” from the farm had seemed to be healing when she was with Khriein, but she was now sure that all he had done was cover it up, for it stung now more than it ever had before. With each moment it grew worse. This, Peor explained compassionately, was simply the revealing of what was already there.

Her feelings about the farm and Khriein followed the same trajectory: The ache turned to resentment, and the resentment to anger. 

***

Instinctively, Khriein knew Peor would take Anthropy back to where he had found them. So just a few hours behind, he followed them all the way back to the barn, but when he got there, they had already moved on. A bit of asking around told him where they had headed, so following their path he continued. 

The last villager he spoke with mentioned seeing a young couple hurrying in the direction of “The Old Vates Farm” a few miles away, but he hadn’t even arrived before the local gossip reached his ears.

“Dead?!”

“Yes, the old farmer! Killed by a young girl, she’s on trial for murder today.”

“Upon my word! That’s extraordinary. Is there any more to the story?” 

“She claims an accomplice, but he’s nowhere to be found. Folks think she might not be ‘all there.’”

Khriein found out where the court was to be held and ran to it. Once inside, he saw Anthropy at the head of the room in chains. Her head hung low; she looked completely undone.

The judge was finishing the charges laid against her, concluding with her sentence: A quota of forced labour which would take her entire lifetime to fulfil. Khriein made his way to the front of the room, interrupting the judge, “Your Honour.”

“Silence—“ he started, but was interrupted again: “I would like to plead guilty.”

The judge stopped. “I’m sorry?” 

“I’m asking you to let her go, and give me her sentence.”

“Are you her accomplice? Did you kill Vates?”

“Yes,” came Anthropy’s voice.

It felt like an arrow hit his already shattered heart, but at least she gave him the help he needed to stay silent.

“He’s the one who killed Vates,” she said again. “I had nothing to do with it.”

The judge was understandably very confused by this turn of events. “Is this man a friend of yours?” He asked.

“No,” she answered quickly.

“How is it that you came to be accused then? Did you not say before that you had an accomplice? Is this the man?” The judge demanded. “If I discover that you’re changing your story, I can give you a harder sentence.”

Khriein remained silent while Anthropy carefully explained. “I tried to tell you that it was a man, not I, who killed Vates. This is that man. He is no friend of mine, I only saw him do it, and on my way to report it, I was falsely accused.”

“Your accent is the same,” the judge observed. “Are you sure you don’t know him?”

“I swear, I have never seen him before last night!” She cried, avoiding Khriein’s tear-filled gaze.

The judge turned to Khriein, “Is this true?”

He was silent for a moment before asking, “Do you think it’s true?”

***

Khriein’s promise to return her to her parents was kept, though he couldn’t personally bring her to them. They found her crying on the porch, too ashamed to go inside.

In the days that followed, she realized that her “wound” had not begun at the farm, as Peor had suggested. It began on the Ophidia, the moment she had begun to doubt Khriein’s love. She realized too, that though Khriein had helped it to heal, she had allowed it to be opened again when she doubted him the second time.

The more time she spent focusing on it, the more it grew, and the moment she had accused Khriein of her own guilt, it was as though it had become infected. It was with this infected sore that she now lived, having no idea how to begin to care for it.

Part 5: The Creek

Micah 6: Hear, You Mountains, the Indictment of the Lord

Good morning! Or whatever time of day it is for you, as you read this.

Micah 6 begins with a strain of desperation in the prophet's voice.

Hear what the Lord says:
Arise, plead your case before the mountains,
    and let the hills hear your voice.
2 Hear, you mountains, the indictment of the Lord,
    and you enduring foundations of the earth,
for the Lord has an indictment (controversy) against his people,
    and he will contend (plead) with Israel. (Micah 6:1-2)

Until now, God has been telling them that sin has brought coming judgment on them, and their response has been to blatantly say that Micah's word is false. They've been coming up with their own prophecies about blessing, and assuring themselves that nothing will go wrong.

The beginning of this chapter reminded me of a time recently when I was visiting my sister and her four little kids.

Her two oldest are 4 year old (now 5, but 4 when this story took place) twin girls, the third is a 3 year old girl, and the youngest a baby. One of their aunts sent them a ton of princess dresses, and two pairs of play-high-heels. You can imagine how it was with three little girls and only two pairs of beautiful shoes, so their mother put the shoes away with the promise that they'd make an appearance again when they learned to share with each other.

When my sister and I arrived, they did get the shoes out! But not without a warning, the shoes would only stay out as long as they could play nicely. Well, they couldn't, so in the box they went again. One of the twins felt so wronged. She just could not understand why the shoes had to be put away.

Their mother knew that they didn't have the maturity yet to understand the answer, so she told her not to argue about it, she had made up her mind. My little niece couldn't see that my sister really wanted them to have the shoes, and that she would love to give them back. She couldn't understand how she could both want them to have them, and take them away. So she continued to argue.

My sister, knowing she was perceived as unfeeling, eventually tried to reason with my niece. "The reason I took them away was because you can't share them! I want to get them out for you, but I just can't right now."

"But we CAN share!" Was the response. The same response they gave earlier, that had resulted in more fighting between sisters.

Parents have to make decisions that are good for their children, even if those decisions make them seem unfeeling or mean. Most often, because their parents know that small children don't have the maturity to grasp reason, a debate is not a part of the equation. Sometimes, if a parent is accused of being wrong, and pushed to their limit, that parent might in desperation, TRY to plead their case. Usually, like with my sister and her daughter, the case is made to a jury who is highly biased.

In Micah 6, God reminds me of a desperate parent. Having all good intentions, every decision made in the best interest of His "children," He is still argued with. Finally, He decides to try "pleading" with Israel.

This is His case:

“O my people, what have I done to you?
    How have I wearied you? Answer me!
4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt
    and redeemed you from the house of slavery,
and I sent before you Moses,
    Aaron, and Miriam.
5 O my people, remember what Balak king of Moab devised,
    and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
    that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord.” (Micah 6:3-5)

(Before I get into this, I recommend reading Numbers 22-24 for proper context. For sake of space, I won't go through the whole thing, but the entire context of the story is very helpful to understand.)

God starts by showing them that His intentions toward them have always been good. He brought them out of bondage, He gave them great leaders, He conquered their enemies, He blessed them by people who set out to curse them. Why would they turn away from Him now, supposing that His intentions have changed?

As I was thinking about the people He gave them for leaders, I was reminded of Exodus 32, when the people of Israel, RIGHT after coming out of Egypt, have already built idols to worship. God's response is rage, He tells Moses that He will destroy them, and start over with his family. He would be keeping His covenant to Abraham, because Moses was a descendant of His.

But Moses' response is this:

Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’” And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. (Exodus 32:12-14)

I just thought, Wow. What better case could God make before this "jury?"

Not only did God save the people, bless the people, fight for the people, but He gave them a leader who loved the people enough to argue with God for their protection. To guard against a moment when God Himself had had enough, He put in place a man who would plead for them.

On top of this, He mentions another story, where a man was commissioned to curse them. God has power to break every curse, to protect from evil, but He didn't just do that. He wasn't content just to shield them from evil, He wanted to replace that evil with good. Instead of cursing, He caused their would-have-been enemy to bless them.

And then we get one of the most profound thoughts in the whole bible.

“With what shall I come before the Lord,
    and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
8 He has told you, O man, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:6-8)

His case is made. His intentions have always been good, He has always done rightly, He has even done more for them than they ever deserved. His conclusion is not that He wants them to repay Him for His goodness by servitude, His conclusion is that He wants them to come back to Him.

His desire is to walk with them, His longing to teach them, His ambition to make them like He is.

I mentioned in a previous post that I love to try to see how the heart of God stays consistent in the Old and New Testaments, I feel like this verse needs very little inspection to make that clear.

Imagine verses 7-8 put this way:

I was not pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousands of rivers of oil.
So I gave My firstborn for your transgression,
    the fruit of My body for the sin of your soul.”
8 I have told you, O man, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:6-8)

The rest of the chapter, (I hope you read) goes right back to the judgment that God is bringing, and why He is bringing it.

One thing that I found interesting about this whole book, is that it was more than a warning to the people from Micah. First, it was a warning to the people while they were in rebellion, but second, it was a book. It was written to last, to be a reminder for the people when they were captives, looking back with regret that they hadn't listened. I imagine, for every hopeless captive who read it, that all of the time God spent showing them how He cared for them and still had goodness in store for them, it brought hope.

But clearly that's not all it was for, because it STILL lasts. God isn't done with this message for Israel, and now that He gave His firstborn for our transgression, inviting everyone to be a part of Israel, this book is for all of us.

Everything God judged Israel for still grieves Him, and He will judge. Everything Israel did that hurt God still hurts Him, everything He wanted for Israel He wants for us. 

His heart, shown so intensely in an intense time in history, is the same.

Micah 2-3: God the Judge, or God the Lover?

Yay! We're back! This is Part 2 of my Micah observations, and please, if you would like to read the chapters I am talking about and add to my thoughts, feel free to do so! I would love to hear what you have learned/are learning.

In the overview I gave last time, I said that the tone of this book is judgment. God has a message for Micah to give to Israel, and His message is that destruction is coming to them because of their sin. However, even while God seems to be angrily telling them of the terror that is coming, He makes sure to mention that He is grieving with them, and for them. Their sin is not just an offence, but a wound, and it's killing them.

In Micah 2, He says,

Should this be said, O house of Jacob?
    Has the Lord grown impatient?
    Are these his deeds?
Do not my words do good
    to him who walks uprightly? (Micah 2:7)

As He is saying "Woe to those..." He makes sure to reasonably refute any injustice they might accredit to Him.

"Think about it," He challenges them. "Am I being harsh?"

What struck me especially was that He said, "Do not my words do good to him who walks uprightly?"

God wants them (and us) to understand WHY He is angry with their sin. Earlier He called it a wound, it's hurting the ones who are committing it. But beyond that, He calls them out for things like,

They covet fields and seize them,
    and houses, and take them away;
they oppress a man and his house,
    a man and his inheritance. (Micah 2:2)

He's not just against the perpetrators, but He is for the victims. To punish them for their sin is to give relief to the ones who have been suffering the results of it.

In Chapter 3, He specifically addresses the leaders of the people. 

And I said:
Hear, you heads of Jacob
    and rulers of the house of Israel!
Is it not for you to know justice? (Micah 3:1)

If you read the rest of the chapter, He basically calls out the leaders, judges, and prophets, for lying, stealing, and mistreating the people they are supposed to be leading.

One of the main things I wanted to point out to my bible study when we read through this book, was that God is the same in the Old and New Testament.

When I was a kid, I heard stories about God bringing Israel out of Egypt, but what stuck in my mind was not the fact that He stepped in and saved Israel, it was that He brought plagues down on Egypt. I didn't think about the picture of salvation the Passover Lamb was for us, I thought about the fact that God killed every firstborn Egyptian. 

When I thought about their deliverance, I remembered the Israelites wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. I remembered the sons of Korah being swallowed by the earth. I remembered Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. David and Bathsheba's baby.

This was my picture of God.

And then somehow, I was supposed to believe that the One who came as a baby, humbly born in a stable, the One who healed the lame and sick, the One who said, "Let the little children come to Me," the One who said, "Let the one without sin cast the first stone," somehow THAT One was the same God?

After all, wasn't GOD the one who made the law that she should be stoned?

I couldn't reconcile those two pictures of God in my mind until I was 13, when I felt the presence of God for the first time. When I felt so desperate, I knew that turning to God was my only option. In that moment, He showed me that I did not understand Him at all.

That moment began a journey for me of learning who God is. I gave Him control of my life, I accepted His sacrifice for me, and suddenly discovered that He wants me to learn to know Him as intimately as He knows me.

What I discovered, when I finally trusted Him and started learning, is that the story of "THAT One," does not begin in the New Testament. His story is told through the whole bible, beginning in Genesis, continuing through to Revelation.

In the Old Testament, you see the heart of God in the New, saying things like,

For this I will lament and wail;
    I will go stripped and naked;
I will make lamentation like the jackals,    and mourning like the ostriches.
For her wound is incurable,
    and it has come to Judah;
it has reached to the gate of my people,
    to Jerusalem. (Micah 1:8-9)

The wound that Jesus knew wouldn't be healed by stones thrown by broken people. The wound that Jesus came to finally bind up and heal.

In the New Testament, you see the heart of God in the Old, saying things like, 

(Jesus talking about the Pharisees) They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. (remember how He reprimanded the leaders in Micah?)
....But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. (remember how He reprimanded the prophets in Micah?)
....O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" (remember how the wound is incurable because they refuse to stop drinking the poison?) 
(Matthew 23:4, 13, 37, commentary added)

In the New and Old Testament alike, God grieves over the sin of the people, and begs them to repent, because He WANTS them. If God really was just so angry that He didn't care to give them another chance, He wouldn't have given Micah anything to say. He was perfectly capable of ruining them without warning them first. The fact that Micah wrote a book of warning to the people is evidence that He wanted to give them another chance.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23)

Micah 1: God's Grief and Places that Don't Exist

This past week, I had the privilege of teaching bible at an arts camp up in the Niagara area.

Every year since it started, I have gone as a camper. Dancing, learning, and trusting God to speak to me. Every year He has.

My first thought, when I was asked if I would be interested in teaching, was that if I have learned one thing from the leaders at dance camp, it's that the secret to success is hearing from Jesus.

Every year they impressed on me that they had asked God what He wanted to speak, and then they waited for an answer. Sometimes He gave an answer the night before the first day of camp, and they had the faith to just wait for it. That is the kind of faith I want to have, and since I already know He has been faithful to speak every year at this camp, I thought it would be a good time to start cultivating that sort of faith in myself.

"Lord," I prayed, "Please tell me what you want me to teach on." And just like that, I felt a gust of wind, and my bible fell off of the shelf into my lap, opened on John 3.

Just kidding.

I prayed, and I got nothin. Which was cool, that's what I expected at first. I have been around prayer long enough to know sometimes you have to wait.

After a few days of waiting, I realized that I had had the book of Micah in the back of my head every day. I decided to start reading through it, and if I got some inspiration, take that as my answer. So I did, and Micah it was! I had such a fun time reading Micah and then teaching about Micah, that I decided to write a blog post (or maybe a few) about it! So here we go. :)

So, Micah was given a message to bring to Israel, and his message was this, "Hear, all you peoples! Thus says the Lord: Behold, against this family I am devising disaster, from which you cannot remove your necks. (but) He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy."

That's a really short paraphrase of his message, taken from several parts of Micah.

Alright, so Chapter 1.

The vibe of this whole chapter is, "I am coming to destroy you because of your sin."

But then there is a really interesting section which says,

For this I will lament and wail;
    I will go stripped and naked;
I will make lamentation like the jackals,
    and mourning like the ostriches.
9 For her wound is incurable,
    and it has come to Judah;
it has reached to the gate of my people,
    to Jerusalem. (Micah 1:8-9)

I had to explain to my bible study class of 8-12 years that "I will go stripped and naked," is not necessarily literal, but is representative of grief. It's similar to the many times the bible says that people tore their clothes in mourning, it was a physical representation of the inner turmoil the person was experiencing.

That being understood...is God grieving?

This puts into a different perspective how God feels about sin. We always talk about how God hates sin, which is true, but in His own words, "I will make lamentation like the jackals." His sobs are loud, His grief is audible.

But wait. He said "For this," referring back to what He just said about judgment. He is not saying He's grieving over sin, He's saying He's grieving over the punishment He's bringing on Israel.

"For her wound is incurable."

Now we discover how He feels about their sin. Their "wound." I don't think I need to elaborate on that. God sees sin as a wound, a detriment both to the one sinned against and the one who committed it.

God hates every part of this. He doesn't enjoy punishment, but he can't continue to watch the people He loves suffer.

But isn't God powerful enough to heal any sickness? Why is punishment the only option? 

Because there is a difference between finding an antidote for a poison you drank once, and a poison you keep drinking every time you get the chance. No matter how much medicine you take for it, if you keep drinking the poison, it's going to be fatal.

There is lots more to this chapter than what I am getting into, but there were two parts that I found the most interesting, and spent the most time teaching on. The second one is a few verses later, where Micah gives a list of cities.

Pass on your way,
    inhabitants of Shaphir,
    in nakedness and shame;
the inhabitants of Zaanan
    do not come out;
the lamentation of Beth-ezel
    shall take away from you its standing place. (Micah 1:11)

What?

I love doing that. :D So often I read the bible, and if things are a little confusing, or I don't have enough context, I'll just be like, "Yeah, I get it." But I really don't. Since I was going to be teaching this book to a bunch of smart kids, I had to actually look into things like this.

I thought, at first, that this was probably what this meant: 

Shaphir is probably a place in Israel, and Micah is saying that the inhabitants of it are going to be disgraced by the punishment of God. Zaanan, (another place in Israel) is going to be so desolate, there will be no more inhabitants to come out. Beth-ezel, (another place in Israel) will lament the ruin of everything she knows, and...the people will have no more place to stand?

The first thing I tried to find out about this verse, is where these places are, and if they have any significance. What I discovered was that none of them actually exist! Shaphir, Zaanan, and Beth-ezel are not places in Israel.

Shaphir means "Pleasantness," or "Splendid."

Zaanan means "Going out."

Beth-ezel means "House of nearness."

The "standing place," as I looked into the meaning, could mean a stage, standing place, or state of being. "Take away from you," could mean "take from you, as in "follow your example."

A couple disclaimers, I don't claim that this is definitely what Micah meant by this list, but this is what I noticed emerge when I looked at all three of them together. Also, if you read other translations of the last part, there are a bunch of different meanings this could take on.

"Pass on your way, inhabitants of Splendor, in nakedness and shame; (The ones that were splendid are now disgraced) The inhabitants of Going Out do not come out; (The ones who went out do not go out anymore) The lamentation of the House of Nearness shall take away from you its standing place. (the House of Nearness will do the same.)"

What is Beth-ezel, the House of Nearness?

Since what is being said is that they have fallen away from God, and thus, will be punished by God, I think the House of Nearness may refer to the temple, or even a metaphor for their relationship with God as a nation.

Shaphir and Zaanan have brought backwardness on themselves. They did the opposite of what they should have done, inviting the consequence, that splendour would become shame, and going out would become staying in. If their modus operandi was backwardness, then the House of Nearness would also fall in line, and nearness to God would become separation from Him.

I guess I will be writing a sequel to this, since I only got through one chapter today. Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on my insights, and any additional insights you have! Thanks for reading!