Maureen Trowbridge reviews two devotional books based on spiritual songs and poems.
Torah Portion: Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17
Re’eh (‘Behold’)
The word Re’eh that starts our Torah portion this week is an interjection demanding immediate attention: Behold! The word re’eh (behold, see, take note) occurs over a thousand times in the Tanakh and is often used by the prophets to preface statements of what God will do.
God says to Israel though Moses: Re’eh, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse (Deut 11:26). This is an important ‘here-and-now’ choice (today), a decision with serious consequences. Israel had seen much of God’s power, protection and provision, and many miracles. They were now given a choice regarding their future: would they hear (i.e. listen) and obey the commandments of God (the Hebrew words for hear (sh’ma) and obey (shamar) come from the same root)?
This is a choice we all must make – and like Israel, it must be made as a matter of urgency (Psalm 95 also says, “Today, if you hear God’s voice, do not harden your hearts…”).
Israel’s Instructions
Israel was given a number of clear instructions which we would do well to heed today. First, they were not to go after other gods or follow the ways of the nations (Deut 12:31), where every man did whatever was right in his own eyes (Deut 12:8). Instead they were to be careful to hear and obey all God’s regulations, “that it may always go well with you and your children” (Deut 12:28). God’s laws were for the protection of His people, who were to be separate from all the other nations on earth.
Secondly, Israel was to not listen to false prophets, who ensnared people into idolatry. This was a test of whether their love for the Lord was wholehearted (Deut 13:8). Again, this is so applicable today to us, surrounded by many false voices (1 John 4:1).
Finally, God stressed the importance of true worship, instructing Israel to observe the main Feasts of the Lord - Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot (Deut 16:1, 10 and 13 respectively).
Vital Choice
Choosing to hear and obey brings blessing and life: “It will go well with you and your children”. Refusal to hear and obey brings cursing and death.
But how can we hear God’s voice among the many noisy demands of this world? It is so easy to focus on worldly voices. God’s word is clear: Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God (James 4:4). It’s that serious. God’s mercy and encouragement says: THEREFORE, CHOOSE LIFE.
Just as Moses challenges us, so do the prophets who followed him. Listen to Isaiah: “Why spend your money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to Me, and eat what is good…Come to Me; hear Me that your soul may live” (Isa 55:2): THEREFORE, CHOOSE LIFE.
Most importantly, Jesus echoes the same truth: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35-51).
God’s promise of life is also a promise of restoration. We can see this being fulfilled before our eyes in the nation of Israel – born again physically (Isaiah 66:8) and soon to be born again spiritually.
THEREFORE, RE’EH, CHOOSE LIFE. Let us make the right choice - today.
Author: Greg Stevenson
Christians have a choice: apostasy and judgment, or faithfulness and preparation?
Monster or hero?
By Susan Gibbs, daughter-in-law of a former Governor of Rhodesia.
Very few, black or white, genuinely mourn the death of Robert Mugabe. They may praise him as ‘an icon of Africa’s liberation’, but few will genuinely mourn his passing. Nor should they, for even by the abysmal standards of post-colonial Africa, ‘Comrade Bob’ was particularly bad.
In his first address after becoming President of Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) following the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, he surprised even his supporters by declaring in clipped English: “I urge you, whether you are black or white, to join me in a new pledge…to forget our grim past, forgive others, and forget.” Yet it was Mugabe himself who never forgot or forgave. Years ago a close friend of his said: “Mugabe hates…nobody hates like Mugabe.”
Not fully aware of the depth of this hate, nor of the spiritual battle being waged, many have searched for other answers to his murderous malevolence. The fact remains that Mugabe was no founding father of Zimbabwe: he was the appalling destroyer of the ‘Jewel of Africa’.
Mugabe’s True Colours
Mugabe in 1982In the midst of the ‘Chimurenga’ (Zimbabwe’s war of liberation from white rule begun in the 1970s by bush fighters), at a summit of post-colonial African leaders in Gabon (West Africa), crucial decisions were imminent on Zimbabwe’s future leadership. The choice was between supporting Mugabe or his arch-rival, Joshua Nkomo. Mugabe was armed and supported by China, while Nkomo was armed and supported by Russia. Mugabe won the day – but he wanted one-party rule and in 1984 Nkomo fled temporarily to England.
Soon after taking power in 1980 Mugabe showed his true colours, as a tyrant intolerant of opposition, consolidating his power in what became known as the ‘Gukurahundi massacre’ in Matabeleland. A conservative estimate concluded that 20,000 black civilians (including women and children) were slaughtered in what has been classified internationally as genocide.
As the nation plunged into decades of famine, an HIV epidemic and hyperinflation in which the central bank printed useless notes (in one night 12 zeros were wiped off the currency), the arch-proponent of pan-Africanism and Marxism sought to apportion blame for the chaos and turned on Zimbabwe’s 4,000 white farmers.
Nothing better sums up Mugabe’s madness: the farmers were among Africa’s most efficient producers of food, the backbone of the economy and essential to the country’s survival, yet he turned on them with murderous viciousness. In the six months before we left at the end of 1983, 10% of the white farmers in our district had been murdered (including, during one Easter holiday, two little girls - school friends of our son - on a neighbouring farm).
Years ago a close friend of his said: “Mugabe hates…nobody hates like Mugabe.”
Brazen Corruption
Few leaders in modern history have been more brazenly corrupt than Mugabe. As the nation sunk into impoverishment, he taunted his citizens by throwing lavish parties at which French champagne and caviar were served.
During those long years many of us kept praying and asking the Lord how he could keep getting away with it for so long. But in Zimbabwe the elderly are respected and as the only African leader who had fought in a ‘war of liberation’, Mugabe was venerated in surrounding countries. Eventually his people were so weakened that they were unable to rise up against him and ZANU, his political party.
Realising at one point that his country needed to work to feed itself, Mugabe briefly pacified white farmers by offering Denis Norman the job of Minister of Agriculture (Norman, previously a minister in Ian Smith’s government, now lives in the UK and runs a small Christian charity dedicated to helping those who suffered during the war years). But after Mandela was released in 1990 and the glory bestowed on Mugabe as the golden boy of Africa shifted southwards, Mugabe ceased trying to woo the world.
Mbare township before (left) and after (right) Operation MurambatsvinaHe sent army personnel to DRC to plunder their diamonds and rape their women, and used army brutality to pillage Zimbabwe’s own diamonds, leading to the suffering and deaths of civilians in Marange. One of his worst actions, in the middle of a very severe winter in 2005, was Operation ‘Clear out Rubbish’ (Murambatsvina) in which he bulldozed slums in Harare. This resulted in the loss of some 700,000 homes and livelihoods, with an estimated 2.4 million indirectly affected. This still haunts many in Zimbabwe today.
Learning to Forgive
Despite his fierce anti-colonialism, declared Marxism and determination to end British rule, Mugabe clung to many customs that echoed colonial rule and maintained a deep personal admiration for the Queen.1
My father-in-law represented the Queen in his capacity of Governor of Rhodesia between 1959 and 1969 and Mugabe wrote a glowing introduction to his biography “honouring him as a man of principle and commitment”.
He later followed this up by sending the 5th Brigade, his North Korea-trained praetorian guard, to kill our family.
We left the country, but the couple who bought our farm were murdered a few months later. We feel profoundly blessed to have escaped without having had a family tragedy. A great many of us have had to learn the true meaning of forgiveness. I remain overwhelmed and grateful for the privilege to have felt the closeness of God during those years.
I remain overwhelmed and grateful for the privilege to have felt the closeness of God during those years.
How to Eulogise
Throughout his long reign, much of Mugabe’s corruption and depravity was unknown to the wider world, as he stifled freedom of expression. Newspapers faced censorship and a ruthless and unrelenting onslaught was mounted on journalists, media houses and individuals who dared express themselves. On one particular occasion I remember the Bulawayo Chronicle was published with an entirely blank front page.
The tragic wreck of a country Zimbabwe became remained two years after Mugabe was deposed in an army coup. Mnangagwa, who has taken over, was involved with Mugabe’s atrocities and is generally regarded as worse.
Reflecting on Mugabe’s death, Fr. William Guri (CSsR, PhD) said the following:
For me to eulogize Robert Gabriel Mugabe would be an act of great betrayal to the many people who died and whose lives have been damaged for life by his long rule.
To eulogize Mugabe for me is to capitulate and give up the struggle for human rights and social justice. It will be to celebrate the triumph of the evil over the good, the false over the true, the darkness over the light, the irrational over the rational, the inhuman over the human.
After thinking long and hard about Robert Gabriel Mugabe, I have concluded that it is alright to feel no sadness and grief. It is alright not to mourn. It is also alright not to feel guilty for not feeling sad and for not mourning. Much as he disregarded Christian values and much as he debased humanity, I shall not allow him to diminish my Christian faith nor my humanity, which in Africa we call Ubuntu.
“Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
Or birds taken in a snare,
So men are trapped by evil times
That fall unexpectedly upon them”
(Ecclesiastes 9:12)
Susan Gibbs is the daughter-in-law of the late Sir Humphrey Gibbs, former Governor of Southern Rhodesia. She is the author of Call Of The Litany Bird: Surviving The Zimbabwe Bush War (2011, Loose Chippings).
Notes
1 A devout Catholic, educated by Jesuits, Mugabe was also a deeply religious man. His mother lived with him during his early years in Government House and each morning they took communion together. As the years went by and we began to see the face of evil in his actions, many felt that the Vatican should have taken action against him. Instead (grotesquely, it was felt) he was even permitted to attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005.
Paul Luckraft reviews ‘Body Zero’ by Nicholas Paul Franks (self-published, 2019)
Torah Portion: Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25
Ekev (‘If…’)
Just before this passage, the Lord reminded the people of Israel that He had chosen them out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be His people, His treasured possession (Deut 7:6). This was both a unique privilege and an awesome responsibility. If they kept the Lord’s commands, He would be faithful to bless them more than any other people.
During their 40 years in the wilderness, the Lord led them, fed them and kept their clothes from wearing out, although they went through challenging times when there seemed to be no provision. God tested them in order to show what was in their hearts and whether they would keep His commands. They had to understand their own weakness and their need to trust Him.
Even our Lord, Yeshua, was tested for 40 days in the wilderness and we, too, will go through trials to teach us to depend on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. It is a sign of the Father’s care, not His neglect or abandonment, that He trains us with loving discipline. In difficulties, we cry out to the Lord. But do we continue to trust when it is tough, and do we remember to keep thanking Him when all is going well?
Danger: Complacency and Pride
The Lord was bringing Israel into a fertile land where they would prosper, multiply and feel secure. Then would come the danger of complacency and the temptation to become proud, forgetting all that the Lord had done to lead them there. “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me’” (Deut 8:17).
Denying the Lord’s provision – including of our ability to produce wealth – is a dangerous step. Today, again and again, we see people lauded for their scientific discoveries or remarkable achievements with no credit given to the Creator who made them possible.
In their pride, Israel would start thinking that the Lord had given them the land because they deserved it. However, the Lord made it clear that it was not because of their righteousness or integrity, but because of the wickedness of the other nations already living there. What was more, if Israel followed their example of pagan worship, they too would be driven from the land. We know that this is just what happened, although they were (and continue to be) His treasured possession.
No-one Can Boast
When we are blessed, are we ever tempted to think that we are somehow better than others? We have been chosen to be holy and blameless in His sight (Eph 1:4) and to be raised with Yeshua and seated with Him in the heavenly realms, but this is all through God’s grace - not of ourselves but by the gift of God, so that no-one can boast.
Instead, we are warned not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought (Rom 12:3). We are to humble themselves; it is the Lord who raises up and blesses (1 Pet 5:6; Matt 23:12). “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Eph 1:3).
Author: Catharine Pakington