to the Children of Israel:
Behold, I send an angel before you to keep you safe on the way, and to bring you to
the place which I have prepared; and I will drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and
the Hittite from before you.
I will not drive them out from you in one year, lest perhaps the land become
desolate and the wild animal of the field multiplies against you. Little by little I will
drive them out from before you, until you become fruitful and inherit the land.
(Exodus 23: 20, 29-30)
What the Lord is telling us in His Word:
• Right from the opening chapters of Genesis
• On through the story of Exodus
• By the wanderings of the Children of Israel in the wilderness
• In the many battles that they had to fight in the land of Canaan
• On through the time of the prophets
• And finally by way of the Lord’s own 33 years of life on earth and
the many mighty works and healings that He accomplished.
What the Lord is telling us by all of these things in their chronological
order, and explicitly in Exodus 23, is that spiritual growth and rebirth, and also
the growth of human relationships, are slow… and gradual … and seasonal …
and majestic.
• Like the change of the seasons
• And the turning of a tide
• And the growth of a tree
• And the opening of a flower
He is telling us that we can’t expect to break out of unhealthy ways of
thinking, or hurtful attitudes, or destructive habits of life – which in the New
Church we call “falsities” and “evils” – all at once. In short, He is telling us that
we can’t hope or expect to be catapulted from any experience of hell in our
lives into heavenly bliss immediately. “Little by little I will drive them out from
before you, until you be fruitful and inherit the land.” (Exodus 23: 30)
But human nature, and maybe a bit of human longing, would have us
believe differently. There really is a tendency that many of us may feel –
especially in our younger years – to believe that somehow any experience of
hell within us can be changed into an experience of heaven in an instant.
For example, we learn about destructive forms of anger and opposite
forms of love, and we don’t want to be angry people; we want to be loving
people instead. And so we may begin to act like we aren’t angry – and that’s
a good start! We might even tell ourselves and other people we aren’t angry at
times when really we are. But does acting like we aren’t angry, and pretending
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