Shade Boys
For I satisfy the weary ones and refresh everyone who languishes. Jeremiah 31:25 NASB
Languishes– Today let’s start at the end. Why? Because that’s where we might be—at the end. At the end of ourselves. At the end of trying to please Him. At the end of the daily discipline. At the end of hoping for something better. When we reach this point, we encounter a pause. A pause in the spiritual battle. A sort of relational hiatus. A break—not quitting but just someplace where we stop thinking, stop debating, stop demanding—and just breathe. Just let it all go for a bit. Stop fighting while trying to keep going. Perseverance might be the essence of faith, but right now perseverance means nothing more than to quit trying.
It’s like knowing you’re still friends but you haven’t communicated in a long time. The bond is still there, but you’re out of touch. The daily interaction is missing. But this isn’t emptiness. This is the place where our feelings, whatever they might be, are no longer analyzed to see if they are acceptable and accepted. This is the place were religious practice is no longer a substitute for true spirituality. Steenkamp offers several examples of what he calls “spiritual by-passing,” i.e., using spiritual language and spiritually constructed morals to avoid expressing true feelings. These include not wanting to hurt someone else because of what I might express, not wanting to confront the past because it’s just easier to let it go, claiming that we should forgive and moving on, converting the personal healing process into a detached spiritual path, and devoting oneself to kindness and compassion in order to cover up emotional trauma.[1] God becomes a way of masking ourselves from true emotional disconnectedness when we use religious terms and religious feelings to keep at bay those emotions that would upset our coping systems. We use Bible study, prayer, tithing, church activities, etc. as distracting agents so that we will not have to face our fears of worthlessness or rejection. We run to “Jesus” to get saved or be forgiven rather than expose ourselves as vulnerable and anxious. None of it works—in the end. We still arrive here, where all the cognitive power we used to keep from being overwhelmed is impotent, a flaccid reminder that we are emotionally spent.
Jeremiah knew this place. For years he struggled to push God’s people toward reformation. For years he encountered rejection, scorn and abuse. And then he reached the end—the pause in all that he did, the place where it just didn’t matter any more. That’s when his God talked about satisfying the weary and refreshing the languishing. We need to know what God means by those verbs, rāwâ and mālēʾ, but before we can experience refreshment, we need to feel where we are—languishing.
The Hebrew word is very infrequent (dāʾēb). It’s used in Psalm 88, Job 41 and Deuteronomy 28. Perhaps the Paleo version adds something. Dales-Aleph-Bet (door-strength-house) reminds me of a particular ritual in Africa. It’s called “shade boys.” The men sit on the ground, leaning against the wall of the house, in the shade. As the sun moves, they move. But they never leave the house. Life is just too difficult to try to do something. Better to just move with the shade. They languish. They wither and waste away, each day staying in the shade. Never really engaging in opportunities. Being content to just sit it out. Maybe that’s where we are now. Shade boys. Just trying to avoid the heat, the scorching light of a world without comfort or compassion. Once again, Steenkamp touches our reality: “The anger that has no vent in tears makes other organs weep.”[2] So it is with all the other emotions. If there is no place, no safe place, to let them loose, we languish.
God comes to Jeremiah while Israel is withering. “For I satisfy the weary ones and refresh everyone who languishes.” Now were ready to hear what He has to say. Now we need the verbs.
Topical Index: dāʾēb, languish, Jeremiah 31:25
JUST A NOTE TO ALL OF YOU WHO RESPONDED TO MY PERSONAL STRUGGLE published on Friday. THANK YOU. You are why I keep writing.
[1]Cf, J. Steenkamp, SHIP: The Age-Old Art of Facilitating Healing, p. 156.
[2]J. Steenkamp, SHIP: The Age-Old Art of Facilitating Healing, p. 70.
I don’t write much, and don’t let you know the impact you make in my life, a deep well of insecurity, but you do touch me, often, profoundly with much grace… Thank-you. Daily for five years now, maybe longer your quest inspires and challenges me to search with growing intensity for the ineffable. Here in the background, sitting in the middle, attempting to both hide and excel, this student wishes to stand up, at least once, and say, from my heart to yours, todah, thank you. Your life matters, G-d has spoken through you, to me and I am humbled as well as exalted. May shalom fill the void in you, at least for a respite from the battle. Blessings.
Bruce
YAH’S blessings Skip to you and your family, did not get a chance to read Friday post , until today on I feel you my dear brother remember we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and power in high places, we are a community behind you all the way so keep on keeping on in YESHUA’S mighty name SHALOM!
Thank you Skip!
Thank you for this!
Dear Skip,
I sense your spentness. Your writing is clear.
Perhaps a good nap in the back of the boat is warranted.
It worked for Yeshua.
Praying that you are greatly strengthened and encouraged
by He who facilitates all.
There are probably many more like me who didn’t respond on Friday, but felt your pain and didn’t know what to say. You are very much a part of my life as I daily read your wonderful posts. After several years of following you, I am sorry to admit that I just recently added you to my daily prayers. I appreciate your courage to be so vulnerable. The depth of your understanding of yourself is way beyond mine, but maybe your sharing will help others to be more open with themselves and with those important to them. I so appreciate the hard work you do in study and research and writing. It is a great help to me in sorting out the Jewish roots of my faith.
As you are doing what you love and what YHVH has skilled you to do, does it really matter who follows and who falls away????…..except for your big heart of compassion for all. I follow with love and joy and gladness and gratefulness and expect that I always will.
I would have to say the word Selah really fits for TWOT. I’ll let a few buses pass ?by before I move on from this one, a lot to process !
“Languish,” yep, that’s the word to describe the season. So weary. My physical body feels 100 pounds heavier as it carries the weight inside me. Thank you for being vulnerable and allowing YHVH to give His insight to this season of languish through you. *sigh* Going to go pull the covers back over my head and languish….Blessings Brother Moen!
Ah, no covers yet! :). Things to do. Wait until tomorrow. We are only on the way out of the shade, but it’s not going to happen in an instant.
There it is …that faith that doesn’t go away even when….. even when the covers are in grabbing distance and the shade keeps drawing us to follow its certain circuit… there is the Greater than eternal languish that just keeps with us in the pause from participating in unrecoverable languish as a certain address. Perhaps we hear a distant echo softly of a past refreshment and waiting in the circuit becomes a place of transit and not so far away from refreshment after all.
As Frodo and Sam lay on the little hill in front of Mount Doom, surrounded by lava flows, utterly spent – “here at the end of all things” – they talk of what might have been – of the things they never said to each other when they were still trying to accomplish their task. They have given up all hope because they can see that they cannot do a thing more. What a blessed place to be! Those who cannot find this place with their faith are eventually brought to it with adversity, for this is the only place of true beginning, if we choose to embrace it as such.
But I think we have been assured that we can learn to find this place through the exercise of faith, and stay there, as our great Example did. May we all, each moment, bring all our attention, will, earnestness and ability to what is at hand. May we leave nothing in reserve; nothing back at home in the flesh. May it all be offered on the altar of what is in front of our faces, BUT, because, (and ONLY because) we have brought it all, are we in a position to see what happens next. The edge of the actions of faith: the offering of the last of the barrel and cruse, bring us (if we learn how to give it all with no reserve) to the place where life is the experience of the continual miracle: the miracle of being met on the far side of our little with His all.
Some people seem to go through their lives followed by an inexplicable stream of goodness and mercy. Wherever they go, God seems to show up and love works. And, sometimes, in the really impossible places, the eagles come. May we learn how to stay in these places: the places beyond the edge of ability and resources: the places where heaven is challenged: the places where only faith works.
The beginning of the diaspora is the beginning of deliverance. We were commanded to be “lights on a hill”. We can choose to walk in faith by freely offering our all, and thus shine the message of the gospel to others, or we can be brought to where we need deliverance ourselves; a place of languishing; a place where we must employ the gospel for ourselves. Either way, we are given an opportunity to be a light to the world. However, at that point, may I be found in front of Mount Doom by the eagles instead of back in the Shire hoping that Someone will show up soon, is my prayer!
A world without comfort or compassion. That’s for sure.
No really cares about others or If they do, they care superficially. It seems. A lack of empathy is one of the ways they describe psychopaths or those on the spectrum. They don’t care about anyone or anything other than themselves. Can people even come to have a real belief in God anymore? I believe that the poisoning that has been going on since the mid 50’s is the reason why people have become sub human. Like animals just wanting their needs met. People don’t realize how they have been affected, Normal today is so abnormal.
Thankfully God knows and understands. It helps to know that but the pain might never go away regardless. Ignorance is bliss if you are living in denial but ignorance will only cause more heartache. What to do?
Jeanette, you are describing the problem quite well. In fact, I think what you are saying is only the tip of the iceberg! BUT, I think we have the illusion that the past was somehow ‘better’. There is no life possible without cooperating with heaven. If you think heaven cannot return even the most hopeless to life again, then you have not been reading your Bible or listening to Skip trying to show us that those folks were just as damaged as we are today!
Chin up, sister. Light shines best in dark places, and God glories in righting all the disasters. He is waiting to work with us when we decide to exercise faith instead of fear. Try trading in that fear and see what a miracle faith can make in even the most apparently hopeless of places.
In my life, I found that toxic thoughts, emotions, bodies and brains can all be restored by making new choices. We were designed to detox. Only fear (stress) keeps us from doing that. Ditch the fear by repenting for it, and all those toxic views can change for better ones. Be an example that others can – and will want to – follow. I am cheering you on!
I am afraid you don’t understand the depth of the problem. ‘Ditch the fear by repenting for it.’ Nothing to do with fear and certainly nothing I need to repent for. To be quite frank, it’s an offensive comment but ok, you don’t understand how serious this problem is. I understand that but it is a religious type of comment that does more harm than good. I don’t care in that I know how people brought up in religious families think, especially in Evangelical/Protestant homes which I am guessing is your experience. I am sure you were sincere in thinking you were helping me but like I have been saying, we are dealing with a very serious problem that’s not going away any time soon.
The religious language often used by believers is something I am allergic to. It is cult-like to me (have to say things perfectly to show you are a true believer) but it would alienate people who are brought up in those kinds of homes who have turned away or to those who know nothing about the TRUTH. Example. There’s a guy whose sole mission is to show people what’s wrong with Christianity even though he was as Christian as you could be (in form at least) until the age of 40 I think. On YouTube he has a talk about how ‘Christianity made me talk like an idiot’. It’s sad. He’s bitter. Seth is his first name. I know two others like him who still believe there’s a God but they turned to Judaism without a belief in Jesus. One is Jono Vandor from Australia and his pal in Ireland. They are always making fun of Christianity in one way or another.
The main problem we are dealing with has to do with the mind-body connection and how the poisoning has affected us. Not a spiritual problem as a cause but the poison definitely affects one’s mental processing.
Skip mentioned Gabor Mate in his follow up post which is after your post. I checked him out which I will mention here instead of response to Skip’s post. Haven’t listened to any of his talks yet. In his article on fb titled ‘Why Are So Many Adults Today Harmed By Trauma?’ (December 23, 2017 post), he says this regarding (the huge issue of) brain damage (not chemistry): We have to realize that, whatever’s going on, it can’t be some genetic ‘problem’ because genes don’t change in a population over 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, or even 300 years. So whatever is going on, it is not genetically determined. It may be biological but it’s not genetic, because we can’t reduce biology down to genetics. …….So then you have to ask: What might be happening in society that might be affecting infants and children? In another post, he says: All dysfunctions originate in early childhood trauma. I agree (to a great extent) with that statement. Trauma to the brain through poisoning.
Jeanette, we have no argument on the poisoning of the entire planet, including our brains. I think we have finally figured out how, like the prophecy in Revelation says, to “destroy the earth”. It cannot be good when, for each and every person in this country, there are several hundred pounds of chemicals manufactured every year.
I know that “ditch the fear” can sound really trite in the face of planetary meltdown, which I believe this is, and I know that it does not fix the poisoning, per se. BUT, I think we can still choose to have a fear response or a faith response to the problem. I know that sounds religious, but I am talking about faith with a little “f”. It may look really scary to see the train coming, but that train can also be the deciding factor for people to choose: even people with brain damage! If there is no crisis point, I have seen people tend to moulder right into their graves without ever making a true choice. Disaster tends to circumvent that.
I think we were remarkably designed to be able to respond to our Creator no matter how bad off we are. Are we going to stand there wringing our hands, or are we going to see yet another chance, given to us by our merciful Creator, to choose life? I have a precious person in my life that was severely damaged by several factors, but, even at the worst, this person could still choose to respond to love, and that love was still enough to pull them back out of their ditch. I got my brain and health back, too. I have decided that poison is reversible from any cause – if salvation (love) is employed, anyway. Without salvation, all is hopeless with or without biological or mental challenges.
I think there are two ends to the snake of disaster. We can choose to grab the tail – we can choose to react to the problem – or I think we can choose to ask the question differently. There is no point where salvation does not work. The correct question may be “how does salvation work even in this place?” I think God is equally at home on the playing field of disaster as He is in the Garden. He is still in control, and we all are still given the chance to choose. Even the most damaged of us. Love conquers all.
Hi Jeanette, just wanted to say that I appreciate your passion in regards to this subject. Perhaps it would help us engage you adequately if you would be a bit more forthcoming on the specifics of what you understand is the core of the problem. Not just the “what” (the physicality) but also the why (functionality) of the affects. I would guess that there are any number of persons on this site which would more than willingly, and I might add, thoroughly, be able to discuss this subject with you. I would only suggest that we honor the format that Skip maintains here as a site for religious devotion and exploration centered in the scriptures, as our first concern. As a side note, I personally don’t see a line drawn between the physical and the spiritual in the scriptures, as with many things pointed out in scripture, the heavens and the earth, the man and the woman, etc. they are two sides of the whole and are dependent on each other. Without speaking for Laurita or butting in to her intentions, I think that is exactly what she’s pointing too with you, it’s not a matter of “religious” speak or any other cultish adherence, but rather a principle given by God in regards to how healing works. Why is it that the diseases of Egypt (the physical) were removed from the children of Israel because of their obedience to the covenant (spiritual)? It’s the same today, Same God, same heaven and the same earth, deliverance is effected by God, and we get to chose whether we want to walk in it, or not.
In order to understand HOW this happened since the 1950’s, you should consider reading Gabor Mate In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. You will discover that it is a lot more than lack of compassion. There are brain chemistry issues involved that come from sources BEFORE you were born. The most significant that I see so far is the absence of extended COMMUNITy. We are only beginning to feel the effects of this and it is already devastating the whole world.
I always look up books/authors mentioned and I will check Mate’s book out but I wonder if you (or other readers) know what I am referring to.
What is the poisoning that has been going on since the 50’s?
Poisoning? Polution. Mental brainwashing of we are born winners. Raising as success is wealth and titles or popularity…
All these are somehow linked to the attitude of thinking we are sent as change agents or redeemers.
When all God asks is restore to be humble towards his will of connection in love support and compassion. Apathy versus Sumpathy instead of learning true empathy…
In Shade Boys you refer to the pathetic acceptance that the world or life owes us. When in fact life is contributing and supporting in relationships to assist in survival…
In Africa as biblically read into the records the man is in charge and must be served. The shade boys bully their wives and children both verbally and mentally if they are not given the lions share. That is the most damaging poison on planet earth all the other are things mother earth can tolerate and reverse even if that means floods and earthqaukes.
The love of true women endures all just to please even Solomon hinted this direction… But with a difference she blesses the man by finding him work to do. Empowering him to use his talents. When the only thing the modern man wants is to be better stronger sexier and in more demand…
Many years ago a lady said when women are depressed they shop or eat but when men are they they invade and destroy… I think the result of the poison you are referring to may just be depression… Hinted towards in the last two weeks TW.
Seeker, it is interesting to me that the body’s reaction to stress is the same, regardless of what is causing the stress. Whether the toxins are biological, mental, emotional or spiritual, the body goes into stress the same way. In the brain, abuse does much the same damage that heavy metals do. In the gut, shame degrades the intestinal wall in much the same way that, say, exposure to glyphosate does.
Conversely, when the body is in a state of peace (homeostasis), the detox pathways are activated and every system cleanses because the cell walls relax when the body/mind/spirit goes out of fight/flight/freeze. Toxins such as chemicals and heavy metals can be cleared by the systems we were created with. Toxic thoughts, emotions and memories can also be cleared by those same systems, and all the methods we have been given to “cleanse (our) way” have always been the same. Reconnection in body, mind and soul (“taking heed”, or, obedience) to God, ourselves, others and our environment releases the healing.
Not speaking for Jeanette, but if I were to guess what poison(s) she is referring to given the time frame, (50″s) I would suggest radioactive fallout due to the “testing” of weapons in our upper atmosphere and in the crust of the earth. Never mind the large number of energy plants and the “minor” as well as major accidents that have, and are, occurring. Not so sure why Jeanette has been so vague on this (what poison she’s referencing) but I understand that the resistance that is encountered when such an issue is raised, is often fierce.
I will respond. Would like to prepare a bit because it’s like any lie that you have heard over and over again. If you are ignorant on the subject, the confusion in your mind will not allow you to see things clearly. Cognitive dissonance. I hate lies because of how harmful and even deadly they are. Even seemingly harmless ones. Like Christmas.
There are so many seriously damaging lies that affect all of us as well. Like Satan being the snake. Why is it so difficult for people to understand that it doesn’t say Satan so it’s not Satan? It’s not there. This false teaching is very damaging.
Then there is the false teaching about a woman’s role. Even though I had learned a lot about what was wrong with so many of the accepted teachings in Christianity by the time I had listened to the Guardian Angel series on YouTube, it made it all so much clearer and made so much sense. That’s it! Like hitting the nail on the head. It was what I was missing. I would like every single person to at least consider reading it so that they don’t experience the problems that are common in marriages today. Attitude is everything.
I recently blocked a man I know (and have met in Japan) through a Torah group who finds Skip’s teaching on the subject hard to swallow. He has a picture of a wife being spanked by the husband for her feminist ideas. He had posted a terrible YouTube video about women ruining the world with their feminist ideas once before that I sent to Skip in an email. To say that Skip’s opinion was disappointing is an understatement. How many people look at the roles with God being over the man and the man being over the woman? The tension it causes. Mutual submission. That is a game changer.
Back to Gabor Mate, I made a mistake with the title of the article by him. Haunted not harmed. Had written haunted first.
‘You will discover that it is a lot more than a lack of compassion’. That is exactly what I have been saying. I have said many times that actual brain damage is the problem so I liked Mate’s comments on the brain damage we are seeing (or not seeing) not being genetic. There is a lot I could comment on things he says but this doesn’t seem to be the place to do that but I will comment on the actual poisoning that started in the 50’s in a more planned out, continuous manner than before (not the actual beginning) because it affects all of us. Minds are being affected negatively and when they are affected negatively, all the prayer in the world will probably not help. Not that I don’t believe in miracles but I haven’t prayed for my vision to be corrected miraculously yet. I need to wear glasses.
Got it. Everything except “Skip’s opinion was disappointing.” Not sure about that. I will have a great deal more to write about brain dysfunction in the future.
Do you remember the YouTube video I sent you? That is what I was referring to. You said you agreed with it. The guy who made it is Canadian atheist who wants to be famous.