November 4, 2014 Exodus 11-19 by Nancy Baird

Audio November 4, 2014 Exodus 11-19 by Nancy Baird

Exodus 11-19

Quotes

Mohammed said:  “He will never be a prophet who was not first a herdsman.”   Interpreter’s Bible, vol. I, 870-871.

 “It was the redemptive event which became the foundation of Israel’s existence as the people of God…a source of abiding wonder.”    Martin Buber, Moses, 75-76.

“They knew how to suffer.  They had done it for a long time and they were used to it.  They did not know how to be free.

The choice people have to make is never between slavery and freedom.  We will always have to choose between slavery and the unknown.

The slavery that keeps us from God is an inner slavery.  We are trapped by ideas of worthlessness and lack of self-esteem, by desire or greed or ignorance…by victimhood or entitlement. Whatever we are attached to will enslave us.  And these masters cause us to suffer needlessly.

The story of the Exodus is a story about the fear of change, about clinging to places and behaviors that are small and hurtful because letting them go will mean facing something unknown.”   quoted from Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings, 371-374.

 “One of the few things I know about writing is this:  spend it all…right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book…give it all, give it now.  The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now.  Something more will arise for later, something better.  These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.”   Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, 78, 79.