Meditate | Heading South

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments or even your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

If you bring out your soul for someone starving and satiate an afflicted soul, in the shadows your light will rise, and your darkness will be like midday. (Isaiah 58:10)

And he [Abram] moved from there onto a mountain to the east of Bethel and spread his tent; Bethel was toward the sea and Ai toward the east. And there he built an altar to Jehovah and called on Jehovah’s name. And Abram traveled, going and traveling toward the south. (Genesis 12:8-9)

Toward the south means into goodness and truth and so into a condition in which inner things would be clear. (Secrets of Heaven 1456)

Heading south sounds pretty nice right now given that the thirteen winter storms so far this season have made this the third snowiest winter in Philadelphia’s recorded history. Actually, I like snow—it’s the cold that’s really getting to me. I long to be somewhere sunny and warm! Not coincidentally, heading south on a spiritual level would feel pretty good, too! What’s going on before Abram travels south?

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Meditate | Walking In The Dark

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments or even your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Isaiah 9:2

“Even the dark shall be light about me.” Psalm 139:11 

“’Darkness’ in Isaiah 9:2 symbolically means falsities such as existed at that time, and which still exist at this day among upright Gentiles—because of their ignorance of truth. These falsities have goodness stored up within them because they have goodness as an end in view. Those, therefore, who are in these falsities are able to be instructed in truths—if not in the world then in the next life—and when instructed they also receive truths in their hearts. The reason for this is that goodness loves truth, and also joins itself to truth when it is heard.” Apocalypse Explained 526 and Secrets of Heaven 9256 as quoted in the Bryn Athyn Church Christmas Readings for 2013.

Nevermind any deliberation about what it might mean to be a Gentile, let alone an upright one or not, I see a reflection of the state described in this passage in my own life. There is a strong inclination in me to condemn myself on account of what falsities I suspect I’m operating under, amidst a thick fear of the outcome if I am to continue to live in that darkness. This mindset is paralyzing, and yet I convince myself it is warranted.

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