(RNS) — I believe I’m commencing to get Ezekiel.
Ezekiel is a single of the most memorable of the Hebrew prophets. The Outdated Testament guide that bears his identify portrays him prophesying God’s coming judgments by way of a collection of weird steps: feeding on a scroll presented to him by the Lord so as to internalize the Lord’s information, producing a miniature model of Jerusalem portraying an attack by Babylonian enemies shaving off his hair to symbolize Israel’s coming degradation lying, for in excess of a yr, initial on his still left facet then his suitable, as a way of bearing the iniquities of Israel and Judah and throughout this time used on his aspect, having bread baked by gas manufactured from dung.
This kind of steps by the prophets are called signal acts. A sign act is “a non-verbal theatrical display” that visually portrays “the consequence of a prophecy.” A sign act is made up of “two main parts: the divine command to the prophet to execute the specified motion, and the interpretation of the signal act,” in accordance to “Dictionary of the Aged Testomony Prophets.” Or, as “The Bible Task” clarifies, a sign act is “nonverbal activity coupled with verbal proclamation.” (It is important to note that biblical prophets communicated God’s information, not their individual their steps did not precipitate God’s steps as fake prophets currently claim to do.)
Ezekiel’s sign functions may well be among some of the oddest components of the Bible. But some weird functions in my possess daily life have assisted me to superior see how, as a result of biblical prophets like Ezekiel, supernatural realities have been built manifest in the purely natural realm.
Five decades back this week, on my way to a meeting with other people from my church denomination, I entered a crosswalk and was struck by a bus. Five yrs later on, I continue to can not get past the strangeness of the total function.
Now on a single amount, we know I received strike simply because I stepped in front of the bus when the bus had the suitable of way. Even so, as other folks at the time pointed out, religious levels appeared to surround this bodily occasion. In the weeks just before the accident, I had taken a foremost and community part in fighting the mistreatment of females by the management and society of my Southern Baptist denomination. In undertaking so, I was signing up for — and advocating for — a extensive-standing, progressively loud refrain of individuals decrying the way in which entrenched buildings and programs in the conference had long been “throwing gals less than the bus.” And all of a sudden, this metaphor became a literal reality.
Then, just two months back, as this anniversary was approaching — and with it the heightened recollections brought on by system memory — though out on a morning run, I was out of the blue attacked by a pit bull.
I experienced prepared that unique working day to be the 1st in a extended time of peace and relaxation right after weeks of vacation and months of perform and ministry-related suffering and trauma. Instead, I observed myself in the back again of an ambulance for the 2nd time in five yrs.
Karen Swallow Prior leaves Vanderbilt College Medical Center on May perhaps thirty, 2018, after remaining hit by a bus on May 23. Picture by Roy Prior
Moreover the bodily soreness and the psychological and emotional jarring that came with the encounter with the bus and then with the puppy, I’m also kind of ashamed. I’m not accident susceptible. Or at minimum, I was not. (For the first 50 many years of my daily life, I experienced no sort of mishap beyond a separated shoulder after currently being thrown by my horse.) I’m also not the kind of individual who likes drama. (No way all over it: Obtaining hit by a bus and attacked by a pit bull are fairly dramatic.)
But the higher truth is that I’ve been drawn into several years of unwanted drama through ongoing in-battling and fracturing within just my religious local community (the exact type that seems to be polarizing most communities these days).
Both equally the mother nature and the timing of these two incidents parallel (far too carefully for comfort) non secular realities in my life: Getting thrown under the bus and staying attacked by a vicious dog are the ideal metaphors for what not only I but numerous some others have also professional over the yrs. The political, denominational, racial and gender power struggles marking each aspect of life these times are significantly extra than what they look to be on the area. They are non secular battles, too.
Although recovering from the wounds of the pet dog, anyone reached out to me with this reminder. “You have served us to make our very own encroachments into enemy territory,” he reported. And “those who are in the vanguard in the great fight in the unseen realm are extra frequently attacked in the realm of flesh and blood.”
A further mate urged me to take the pet attack as a reminder that amid all my attempts and issues more than the several years with the spiritual realm — my ministry of educating, composing and speaking to provide the church — I want to guard my bodily wellness and bodily perfectly-becoming.
This separate counsel from two various mates taken alongside one another features a overall photo, a photo easily distorted when we neglect 1 section of the counsel or the other.
The image is this: The bodily and spiritual realms are not individual, not in just about every of us as person bearers of God’s impression, nor in the entire world in which we reside, one particular that is made up of each a actual physical realm and a non secular one. Reality is composed of both equally. Angels and demons are as authentic and as present among us as canines and buses. The universe, as some theologians place it, is organic and natural. It is significantly less a equipment created up of discrete sections than, as Iain McGilchrist describes, a stream — living, flowing, switching and mutually impacting all that are in it.
We need not — ought not — go about trying to find a non secular explanation for every thing, great or undesirable, that transpires during our working day. But we also ought not to neglect that almost everything that takes place throughout our day — and our life — can draw us nearer to or press us farther absent from God, relying on how we reply.
In this way, all of daily life below on earth is a sign act. Our earthly existence prepares us to stay with or with no God for eternity. We are offered the opportunity to “read” everything in that light-weight, even even though recognizing the finitude of our reading comprehension as properly as our know-how.
But sometimes the symbols in this allegorical journey we get in touch with everyday living are painfully clear. It is then, I come across, that my require to draw nearer to God becomes extra noticeable, additional urgent and far more desired. The signal functions issue me additional evidently to the Way.
And I have picked a new route to operate.