In Those Days...

             In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit. (Judges 21:25)

Two reactions: “Oh, they were free!” and “Oh, those rotten, terrible, stupid Jews!” And the answer to both those is “Sorry. No.”

Israel didn’t have a king. It did have a series of judges. What it also had was a series of invading armies, rulers, and oppressors. The cycle was simple.

Israel got blessed by God.

Israel forgot God and did whatever they wanted.

God let them face the consequences of their freedom from Him, which involved their being oppressed by other nations.

Israel humbly called for His help; He blessed them by freeing them from their oppressors. Return to top.

Being “free” led to their being rotten, terrible and stupid. But you have a habit. You let it slide. Your life falls apart. You re-establish your habit. You have a secure relationship. You take it for granted. It falls apart. You have to re-establish that relationship. It’s not that Israel was rotten, terrible, and stupid. It’s that we all are. And quite often, even if we learn from our mistakes in one small area of our lives, we don’t apply them elsewhere. The cycle continues. It just moves from here to there. Or it moves from here to here and there, then on to and everywhere.

Whether we want to see these things as swings of a pendulum or as cycles, the point is that we are beings with internal motion. It is both impossible and absolutely necessary that we maintain ourselves, our habits, our values, and all too easy to let things slide or to enjoy what we see as our success in a way that ultimately ruins our success.

This is part of the reason I commented yesterday (on Facebook) that I had managed to maintain my habit of knee exercises since January. There have been times when I was tempted to let them slide. There have been fewer times when circumstances got in the way of my completing them or doing them. But despite myself, I’m holding on to a good habit. My sister mentioned working to build a good habit of picking a project a day. These are good things as long as we do them. The same goes for our relationships with others, including God. If we invest in them, they improve. If we ignore they, they crumble.

As I think about my life, it seems to me as if I’m trying to build a number of these habits and investments. Sometimes, it feels as if I’m struggling to keep up with everything and I’m tempted to let this or that coast. Sometimes, they do coast for a while, but I never end up better off for the things coasting. Life may be easier, but not better. The thing is, I’m dealing with learning curves. When you don’t know how to do something, or aren’t used to doing them, they take longer and seem harder. As we develop the habit further, it become easier. We feel better after attending a meeting we didn’t want to go to, or when we’ve maintained the habit we wanted to take a break from. And, whether we feel better or not, we are better off if we don’t let our relationships deteriorate, especially in the name of “freedom.”