interiorwork

Category: see:hear

  • Exodus on bringing about peace

    An image of a door opening as a metaphor for bringing peace as told in the book of Exodus.

    The book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible is a sobering look at the difficulty in bringing about peace. Starting with a new king, to heading into the wilderness, nothing is easy for these ancient people.

    And here we are over 2,000 years later still seeking peace. Maybe walking humbly alongside them in their struggles, we can see more clearly our own.

    What Exodus shows is needed to bring peace

    The Bible reminds us of this simple truth. What one sees and hears changes the possibility of peace. Whether ruler or minion, God or mortal. And Exodus, the first story in the Bible about empire, is a master class.

    There is a new king in Egypt as the book of Exodus opens. And the first thing he does is to tell the Egyptians to see.

    “Look, [says the king to the Egyptians], the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we.” Exodus 1:8

    And this is where the story begins. Not with the miracles or the plagues but with the simple choices we make about what we hear and see.

    Pharaoh tells the Egyptians to see a threat by focusing their sight on the Israelites’ growing numbers. And immediately the Egyptians “set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor.”

    There is fear and violence, not peace.

    Close your eyes and block your ears

    Bringing peace to Egypt will elude the pharaoh. Hope is lost. Fear and violence grow.

    But the Lord, hidden from sight, has heard and seen. And the Lord says to Moses,

    “The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them.” Exodus 3:9

    As the story unfolds, you will see what happens when rulers do not rule wisely. Their eyes and ears blocked by the fear of losing power, or, trying to gain it. You will see how difficult it is for their subjects to see and hear for themselves.

    You will also see the Israelite people turn to an unseen power as they sink lower into powerlessness.

    For when you are powerless, miracles and signs that a force unseen is on your side corrects that imbalance of power.* It makes visible the power of the unseen for those who plug their ears and shut their eyes to reality.

    Miracles and signs are utilitarian, amazingly, in order that all God’s people are at the table. Pharaoh and slave.

    Bringing peace is a journey in Exodus

    I did not expect Exodus to so richly tell of bringing peace through the simple acts of seeing and hearing. Nor did I expect to see miracles in a new way. There is so much to experience here. But it needs to be an experience shared.

    Only when people with different world views sit down to speak of what we see and hear can peace come. So come, grab a group of friends to journey through this story of Exodus. You will travel a lot of ground, politically, personally and theologically. So, when you finish Chapter 15, rest for a while. As did the Israelites. For this is still the beginning for those ancients and we moderns. The road to peace is long.

    First though, remember, as the Israelites remembered, of what must happen to bring peace. To listen carefully to the voice of the Lord and do what is right in the Lord’s sight. “For I am the Lord who heals you.”

    In the last verse of the fifteenth chapter of Exodus, we are reminded of the universal desire for peace. We catch a glimpse of the garden in Eden.

    Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they camped there by the water. Exodus 15:27

    We too will catch glimpses of peace, even if briefly before journeying on, when we turn to look towards it together.

    Peace be with you.

    *A loving shout out to a faithful book group discussing Yangsze Choo’s book, The Fox Wife, and the author’s thoughts on writing it. Thank you all for helping me see.

    Postscript: Bringing hope for peace

    Check out More Perfect, a non-profit partnership formed as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

    It may bring you hope. It did me. Here is their statement.

    “At a moment marked by dysfunction and division, More Perfect – a campaign to align America around a shared vision for democratic renewal – is our reminder that our finest moments come when we set big, bold, long-term goals that capture our imagination and then rally across our differences to achieve them.”

  • Looking deeper at America

    It is time to be looking deeper at America. Deeper not in the sense of more analyzing or theorizing or debating. But deeper in the sense of looking closely at what we are doing without looking away from what we see. Because the earth is shaking under us.

    • Looking from a ferry at container cranes in Port of Seattle WA set against dramatic clouds in United States
      Seattle WA
    • Looking from train at arid hills in foreground with Columbia River glimpsed beyond.
      Quincy WA
    • Looking from a train at an arid landscape with rolling hills with row of trees in the distant crest.
      Culbertson MT
    • Looking from a train at an intersection in a small town in an arid flat country.
      Glasgow MT
    • Looking from a train with a mobile home and scattered discarded objects in arid landscape and snow covered mountains in background.
      Browning MT
    • Looking from train at a winding river set below large stratified cliffs.
      Cut Bank MT
    • Looking at a landscape of flat golden grasses with a lone black bull silhouetted against a background of rolling hills.
      Willeston ND
    • Looking at a landscape of a harvested field scattered with round hay bales.
      Towner ND
    • Looking from a train at graffiti on golden brick retaining wall.
      St Paul, MN
    • Looking from a train at footprints on snowy sidewalk along a residential street with two-story traditional homes.
      Winona MN
    • Looking from a train at a tug boat on water.
      Red Wing MN
    • Looking at snow-covered cultivated field with silo and woods in background.
      Bangor WI
    • Looking from a train at snowy rural scene with horses in foreground among bare trees with wooden structures and low hills beyond.
      Sparta WI
    • Looking from a train at a flat green field with stone piles and grain elevator in background.
      Milwaukee WI
    • Looking at a train station framed by railcar window.
      Erie PA
    • Looking from a train at a blurred image of train crossing lights on rural country road.
      Harborcreek PA
    • Looking from a train at a lumber yard with stacks of building lumber with trucks and equipment in background.
      Whitesboro NY
    • Looking from a train at deciduous tree forest with band of evergreen trees in midground.
      Fonda NY
    • Looking from a bus at a working waterfront with several buildings and cranes seen in background.
      Bath ME

    Traveling from coast to coast, looking through ferry, train and bus windows at America, my first thought was wow, so this is America. There was a sense of self-satisfaction. Hey, all you guys up in planes, I’ve seen it and you haven’t. But this is school yard talk.

    America too could experience what history tells us is inevitable when a people don’t heed a trembling of the table at which we all sit. When a people shrink that table to family size, or country size, like-minded size or look-a-like size. When a people don’t see deeply into the reality that there is only one table and by giving weightlessness to some at the table, the table becomes unstable and begins to shake.

    Without our seeing the signs, gone is the sanctity and certainty of grass growing, birds singing, people living. Visions cease and violence begins. However, there is nothing head scratching about this. It is simply the logical result of not looking deeply, or seeing and turning away from what we are doing to each other. Nonetheless, we have plenty of company in the history of humanity. We can travel back to one of the first stories told of a people for whom the earth began to shake.

    Looking deeper in 800 BCE

    This is what the Lord God showed me: a basket of summer fruit. He said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.”

    Amos 8:1-2

    Amos was a shepherd and dresser of Sycamore trees around 800 BCE. Then God saw fit to show him how to look deeper and see that his world was headed towards violence.

    God said, “Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land.” So says the Lord God, “the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place.”

    God looks deeper at that basket of fruit and sees violence ahead. Was it that it was summer fruit, eaten today and gone tomorrow with no vision of what there would be to eat in the winter? Or simply that the season of plenty was over because not all shared in that plenty. The Hebrew Bible doesn’t say but the book of Amos does offer insight on what is needed for looking deeper at America.

    Finding America’s basket of summer fruit

    Here is some of what the book of Amos offers those of us wanting to see deeper into the reality of America.

    • Become who you are meant to be. Amos was a shepherd. A person accounted no weight until he chose to listen, see and speak out. “…the land is not able to bear all his [Amos’] words.”
    • Be visceral. Talk blood and gore because that is the reality when a people see the trampling of the poor and look away. “…your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword.”
    • Hope always. Look so deeply that you can see good creation fermenting within the violence. “…they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.”

    Looking deeper into the news

    As we look at images from across America and attempt at looking deeper, here are images showing before and after air strikes in 2014 in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, with buildings reflecting a 2,000 year settlement that look like security itself. In reality, looking secure can not save a city when security is not shared by everyone.

    The May 26, 2025 article in The Guardian, ‘Nothing left to bomb’ by Ruth Michaelson and Hashed Mozqer reflects on the loss of sanctity and certainty in Sana’a as new airstrikes continue to destroy lives and the life of this city. In response, Mohamed Althaibani, a naturalized US citizen living in Sana’a, can only lament,”Many people have died – and for what? There is nothing to strike here, except people trying to live, looking for food.”

    Whatever work is needed for looking deeper at America, the book of Amos is clear that we humans have trouble seeing what we don’t want to see. Decidedly, this is a theme throughout the history of humanity, recorded many times in the Bible, and lamented by those who see deeper.

    The earth is shaking. Will we look deeply at America’s basket of summer fruit and meet the gaze of all around the table?

    Read other blog posts on the action words of the Bible