TEVET 4
Putting Down Roots
“Yahweh, who shall dwell in your sanctuary?” (Ps 15:1 WEBA)
When the nation of Israel entered the
Promised Land, the land itself was divided up into different areas, according
to the different tribes (see Num 34; Jos 13).
Ownership of land belonging to a particular tribe had to stay within that tribe; it could not be sold to any
other (see Lev 25; 27:24; Num 26:55). We
even find ‘check valves’ within the instructions of Torah, wherein the land
should always return to its original owner in the year of the yovel (Jubilee, the 50th
year. See Lev 25:10). Land was passed
down from father to son, a practice that has continued for many centuries
throughout virtually every continent of our world, and is still found in
agricultural societies today.
However, in our ‘modern’ society of the
United States of America, we have become a transient nation. If we don’t particularly like where we are
living, we move. If we can find a better
employment prospect on the other side of the country, we move, and think nothing
of it. If we desire to retire to a
warmer climate, we move, and it is not a big deal. The ageless concept of ‘putting down roots’
has vanished into the barrow ditches of the highways and byways that take us
where we think we need to go. In the last ten years, I personally know of
several large ‘family’ ranches, first
homesteaded in the mid-to-late 1800’s, that have now been sold and divided up
into smaller ‘ranchettes’, all because none of the remaining offspring wanted
anything to do with their family ‘roots’.
Sad, so very sad.
As believers and disciples of the Elohim
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, where are our
roots? Where do we choose to take up permanent
residency? Or are we just passing
through, waiting on that better job opportunity that is sure to come along at any moment …
“For a day in Your courts Is better than a
thousand days. I have chosen
rather to be a doorkeeper In the House of my Elohim, Than to dwell in the tents
of the wrong.”
(Ps 84:10)
©2020
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