September 16th, 2009 
jojoagot-RF 
Today, nobody dies for not being able to give the correct password. Nobody gets shot for not pronouncing a word correctly. We live in a free world. But this hasn’t always been the case.
A few thousand years ago, there was a certain tribe in Palestine that was almost annihilated because they spoke a different accent and consequently could not give the correct password to the conquering tribe who would have spared them if they only knew their basic linguistics. The Jordan River turned crimson red as it became a killing site for thousands of people who were trying to escape the crazy outcome of a conversation that has gone wrong. It was a grim day in Israel. Jephthah was the leader. The story is in Judges 12.
Jephthah led a group of Gileadite warriors that day and defeated the Ammonites who oppressed Israel for 18 years. He was tired and bleeding from the fight when the proud sons of Ephraim marched in and threatened to kill him for not “inviting” them to go to war.
In the heated confrontation, the Ephraimites insulted not only Jephthah but all the Gileadites who fought with him, calling them “nothing more than refugees from Ephraim and Manasseh.” Since I grew up speaking Filipino, I can’t quite grasp the intensity of the insult written in formal English but when I translated it to Tagalog (hoy, kayong mga taga-bundok, mga eskwater lang kayo dito, ‘wag kayong magmagaling, mga walang kwenta!), I can understand why lives were lost that day. These warriors deserved honor for saving an entire nation. They didn’t need insults.
What happened next was horrible. The Gileadites turned on the Ephraimite soldiers and started killing them. They chased those who tried to escape. They quickly posted sentries at the crossing of the Jordan River so no one can escape (they were mountain people, after all, and they know the terrain better than the Ephraimites who came from the city).
Then the Gileadites played this little trick. Everyone who wanted to cross the Jordan was asked where he was going. A little mispronunciation of the word “Shibboleth” (Hebrew for river) and they kill the person right on the spot. A very neat trick because in all of Israel, only Ephraimites cannot properly pronounce the SH sound. They’d say “Sibboleth” instead. Forty two thousand men died that day, all of them died of their accents. River access denied.
… to be continued…
The clock lied to me this morning. I looked at its hands and I was sure it was 6:09 am. I went outside, switched off the lights, went to the bathroom, almost had a shower but decided against it, went back inside my room, looked at my cellular phone for messages and was confused when I saw the time. It was still 3:09 in my phone. I looked at the clock again, the seconds were moving but the time was different from my digital cellphone clock. Still confused, I looked at the sky outside but the artificial lights weren’t of any help. Then I figured that if all the other clocks failed, there’s only one place to go to find the correct time, the world time server in the internet. Within seconds I realized that my analog wallclock is malfunctioning, my cellphone was right and the correct time was 3:09. Problem solved, pronto.
This is just a wild idea that popped in my head while reading Ecclesiastes 12:1. I was particularly struck by the phrase “I find no pleasure in them.” Most of the time we think this verse only refers to that period of time before your body begins to fail you and you can no longer enjoy the simple pleasures of life, somewhere along your 50s or 60s. And rightly so since the rest of the chapter gave a detailed inventory of the parts of the body that are weakening.
er application of this verse that has been in my head for days now. It’s about remembering God before we become too jaded with the world. But that’s an entirely different topic. Maybe on another post if I get around to writing it. In the mean time, what do you think of this? Leave your comments below. Thanks.
As Pastor Jay-R asked the congregation to stand up, close their eyes and pray, I could not help but silently cry at the sudden wave of realization that hit me. For years I’ve been waiting for “my moment” to happen. Simon didn’t wait for his moment. The moment waited for him on that dusty road outside Jerusalem. He came right on time at the right spot where he was needed. Without having the time to ask questions, he was thrust into the middle of the action, never knowing that all the power of heaven orchestrated everything for him to be there at that exact moment. Only in hindsight will Simon understand the magnitude of the role he played that day. In the mean time, he was busy carrying a heavy cross for some guy who turned out to be the Savior of the whole world.
