Helen Keller was born this day, June 27, 1880. At the age of two she suffered an illness that left her both blind and deaf. Her parents took her to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell who recommended the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. There, at the age of seven, Anne Sullivan began tutoring her through the sense of touch, eventually teaching her to read Braille. She attended Radcliffe College, wrote several books and was recognized for her efforts to help the blind. Helen Keller wrote: “I thank God for my handicaps, for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.”

Federer, B. (2003). American minute. St. Louis, MO.: Amerisearch, Inc.

What is it that we all believe in
that we cannot see or hear
or feel or taste or smell -
this invisible thing that heals all sorrows,
reveals all lies and
renews all hope?
What is it that has always been
and always will be,
from whose bosom we all came
and to which we will all return?
Most call it Time.
A few realize that it is God.
--- Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

... from here, there and everywhere

5 The heart’s real intentions are like deep water;
but a person with discernment draws them out.

6 Most people announce that they show kindness,
but who can find someone faithful [enough to do it]?

Stern, D. H. (1998). Complete Jewish Bible-OE
: An English version of the Tanakh (OT) and
B'rit Hadashah (NT) (1st ed.). Clarksville, Md.: Jewish
New Testament Publications.

                         The overshadowing personal deliverance

     I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. --- Jeremiah 1:8.

     God promised Jeremiah that He would deliver him personally—“Thy life will I give unto thee for a prey.” That is all God promises His children. Wherever God sends us, He will guard our lives. Our personal property and possessions are a matter of indifference, we have to sit loosely to all these things; if we do not, there will be panic and heartbreak and distress. That is the inwardness of the overshadowing of personal deliverance.

     The Sermon on the Mount indicates that when we are on Jesus Christ’s errands, there is no time to stand up for ourselves. Jesus says, in effect, ‘Do not be bothered with whether you are being justly dealt with or not.’ To look for justice is a sign of deflection from devotion to Him. Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it. If we look for justice, we will begin to grouse and to indulge in the discontent of self-pity—‘Why should I be treated like this?’ If we are devoted to Jesus Christ we have nothing to do with what we meet, whether it is just or unjust. Jesus says—‘Go steadily on with what I have told you to do and I will guard your life. If you try to guard it yourself, you remove yourself from My deliverance.’ The most devout among us become atheistic in this connection; we do not believe God, we enthrone common sense and tack the name of God on to it. We do lean to our own understanding, instead of trusting God with all our hearts.

Chambers, O. (1993). My Utmost for His Highest

This is the village
to which the lost traveler
came, searching for his first spring,
and found, lying asleep
in the young snow, how cold
was its blossom.
The trees
are of iron, but nothing
is forged on them. The tower
is a finger pointing
up, but at whom?
If prayers
are said here, they are
for a hand to roll
back this white quilt
and uncover the bed
where the earth is asleep,
too, but near awaking.

R.S. Thomas.

     When we observe people, what do we see—good or evil?

     After having observed the experiment called humanity for ten generations, God concluded:

     “… the devisings of man’s mind are evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21). People are, by nature, wicked. To punish them for being true to their inclinations seemed both unfair and futile, so God swore not to destroy humankind again by means of a catastrophic flood.

     After having observed eight human beings hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic for two years, Anne Frank concluded:

     It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. (diary entry, July 15, 1944)

     Who was right—God or Anne? God understood the human heart only too well. It wasn’t necessary for God to “ever again destroy every living being …”; humankind in the twentieth century proved quite capable of doing the job, murdering tens of millions in the most horrible of ways.

     But Anne wasn’t just a naïve fifteen-year-old when she wrote her startlingly optimistic words. She knew very well what human beings were capable of in the world outside her hiding place. But she also knew that human beings were risking torture and death every day trying to keep her and seven others alive in a hidden room, behind an upstairs bookcase.

     So who was right … God or Anne Frank? In typical Rabbinic fashion, the Midrash responds: They’re both right. There is within every human being the possibility of evil, and there is within every human being the possibility of righteousness. The heart, if left uncontrolled, will create much wickedness. But the heart can be controlled, and if it is, much goodness will result.

     What is most fascinating is that the difference between righteousness and evil, between a person who is a צַדִּיק/tzaddik, and a person who is a רָשָׁע/rasha, is minute. The Rabbis point this out by focusing on a minor grammatical point. The single Hebrew letter בּ/bet, attached as a prefix to the Hebrew word for “heart,” signals a human being who has been grabbed and taken over by another entity, another power.

     Conversely, the Hebrew prepositions אֶל/el and עַל/al, made up of just two Hebrew letters each, are separate words, not prefixes; they remain independent of the “heart.” They remind us that when people stand on their own and remain apart from negative influences, they can control their own destinies. A difference of one single letter, set one step apart, changes everything. The Rabbis took note of these small choices of grammatical usage. And they taught us that the same rules apply to the realm of morality. It’s the small choices we make in life that determine whether the heart controls us or whether we control the heart … whether we become like those who hunted down the innocent, or become like those who hid them.

Katz, M., & Schwartz, G. Searching for Meaning in Midrash: Lessons for Everyday Living Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society.

     Jesus replied, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!” (He meant Judas… who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.) --- John 6:70–71

     It is the often-told tale of a single sin springing up and luxuriating in secret, till in its rank growth it has twined itself around the fibers of the heart and choked and killed with its poisonous embrace whatever there was of pure and noble and good in the soul. Sermons Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral [Judas] had, as everyone whether good or bad has in some form or other, an evil tendency in his heart. Here was his trial; here might have been his moral education. But he made it his master, and it plunged him in headlong ruin. There was, first of all, the pleasure of fingering the coin; then there was the desire of accumulating; then there was the reluctant hand and the grudging heart in distributing alms; then there was the silent appropriation of some trifling sum as indemnification for a real or imagined personal loss; then there was the first unmistakable act of petty fraud—and so it went on and on, until the disciple became the thief, the trusted became the traitor, the apostle of Christ [became] the son of perdition.

     For there was no external check on him. The moral checks—the influences, the companionships, the divine presence—ought to have been more than a compensation for the absence of material checks. The incomings and the outgoings of the common purse were alike precarious. There was no balancing of ledgers, no auditing of accounts in the little company. No one knew what was received and what was spent. Each trusted and each was trusted by the other.

     Up to the time of his fall Judas had been avaricious, miserly, fraudulent. Let us use the plain language of the Evangelist, he had been a thief. But a traitor, an archtraitor—this was far from his thoughts.

     The opportunity came.

     The end we know. He flung back the accursed coin, the seal of his guilt, to those who had tempted to the fatal act. He could not bear the light, could not bear life, could not bear himself.

     Only his history remains as a warning to us how the greatest spiritual privileges may be neutralized by the indulgence of one illicit passion, and the life that is lived in the face of the unclouded sun may set at last in the night of despair.
--- J.B. Lightfoot

Wallis, D. (2001). Take Heart: Daily Devotions with the Church's Great Preachers

     If this book had ended at the last verse of chapter 3, history would have portrayed Jonah as the greatest of the prophets. After all, preaching one message that motivated thousands of people to repent and turn to God was no mean accomplishment. But the Lord doesn’t look on the outward things; He looks at the heart (1 Sam. 16:7) and weighs the motives (1 Cor. 4:5). That’s why Chapter 4 was included in the book, for it reveals “the thoughts and intents” of Johah’s heart and exposes his sins.

     If in chapter 1 Jonah is like the Prodigal Son, insisting on doing his own thing and going his own way (Luke 15:11–32); then in chapter 4, he’s like the Prodigal’s Elder Brother—critical, selfish, sullen, angry, and unhappy with what was going on. It isn’t enough for God’s servants simply to do their Master’s will; they must do “the will of God from the heart” (Eph. 6:6). The heart of every problem is the problem in the heart, and that’s where Jonah’s problems were to be found. “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry” (Jonah 4:1).

     The remarkable thing is that God tenderly dealt with His sulking servant and sought to bring him back to the place of joy and fellowship.

     God listened to Jonah (Jonah 4:1–4). For the second time in this account, Jonah prays, but his second prayer was much different in content and intent. He prayed his best prayer in the worst place, the fish’s belly, and he prayed his worst prayer in the best place, at Nineveh where God was working. His first prayer came from a broken heart, but his second prayer came from an angry heart. In his first prayer, he asked God to save him, but in his second prayer, he asked God to take his life! Once again, Jonah would rather die than not have his own way.

     This petulant prayer lets us in on the secret of why Jonah tried to run away in the first place. Being a good theologian, Jonah knew the attributes of God, that He was “a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (v. 2, NIV). Knowing this, Jonah was sure that if he announced judgment to the Ninevites and they repented, God would forgive them and not send His judgment, and then Jonah would be branded as a false prophet! Remember, Jonah’s message merely announced the impending judgment; it didn’t offer conditions for salvation.

     Jonah was concerned about his reputation, not only before the Ninevites, but also before the Jews back home. His Jewish friends would want to see all of the Assyrians destroyed, not just the people of Nineveh. When Jonah’s friends found out that he had been the means of saving Nineveh from God’s wrath, they could have considered him a traitor to official Jewish foreign policy. Jonah was a narrow-minded patriot who saw Assyria only as a dangerous enemy to destroy, not as a company of repentant sinners to be brought to the Lord.

     When reputation is more important than character, and pleasing ourselves and our friends is more important than pleasing God, then we’re in danger of becoming like Jonah and living to defend our prejudices instead of fulfilling our spiritual responsibilities. (The early church faced this problem when Peter took the Gospel to the Gentiles (Acts 10–11; 15). According to Jewish theology, Gentiles had to become Jews (proselytes) before they could become Christians, but Cornelius and his family and friends were saved simply by believing on Jesus Christ. When Peter said “whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins,” the people present believed the promise, trusted Christ, and the Holy Spirit came upon them. Peter never got to finish his sermon (10:43–48). The legalistic Jews in the Jerusalem church argued late that Gentiles could not be saved apart from obeying the Law of Moses, and Paul had to debate with them to protect the truth of the Gospel (Acts 15; Gal. 1). Jonah would have sided with the legalists.) Jonah certainly had good theology, but it stayed in his head and never got to his heart, and he was so distraught that he wanted to die! (Both Moses (Num. 1) and Elijah (1 Kings 19) became so discouraged that they made the same request. We lose our perspective when we focus on ourselves and fail to look by faith to the Lord (Heb. 12:1–2).) God’s tender response was to ask Jonah to examine his heart and see why he really was angry.

     God comforted Jonah (Jonah 4:5–8). For the second time in this book, Jonah abandoned his place of ministry, left the city, and sat down in a place east of the city where he could see what would happen. Like the Elder Brother in the parable, he wouldn’t go in and enjoy the feast (Luke 15:28). He could have taught the Ninevites so much about the true God of Israel, but he preferred to have his own way. What a tragedy it is when God’s servants are a means of blessing to others but miss the blessing themselves!

     God knew that Jonah was very uncomfortable sitting in that booth, so He graciously caused a vine (gourd) to grow whose large leaves would protect Jonah from the hot sun. This made Jonah happy, but the next morning, when God prepared a worm to kill the vine, Jonah was unhappy. The combination of the hot sun and the smothering desert wind made him want to die even more. As He had done in the depths of the sea, God was reminding Jonah of what it was like to be lost: helpless, hopeless, miserable. Jonah was experiencing a taste of hell as he sat and watched the city.

     A simple test of character is to ask, “What makes me happy? What makes me angry? What makes me want to give up? Jonah was “a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8, NKJV). One minute he’s preaching God’s Word, but the next minute he’s disobeying it and fleeing his post of duty. While inside the great fish, he prayed to be delivered, but now he asks the Lord to kill him. He called the city to repentance, but he wouldn’t repent himself! He was more concerned about creature comforts than he was about winning the lost. The Ninevites, the vine, the worm, and the wind have all obeyed God, but Jonah still refuses to obey, and he has the most to gain.

     God instructed Jonah (Jonah 4:9–11). God is still speaking to Jonah and Jonah is still listening and answering, even though he’s not giving the right answers. Unrighteous anger feeds the ego and produces the poison of selfishness in the heart. Jonah still had a problem with the will of God. In chapter 1, his mind understood God’s will, but he refused to obey it and took his body in the opposite direction. In chapter 2, he cried out for help, God rescued him, and he gave his body back to the Lord. In chapter 3, he yielded his will to the Lord and went to Nineveh to preach, but his heart was not yet surrendered to the Lord. Jonah did the will of God, but not from his heart.

     Jonah had one more lesson to learn, perhaps the most important one of all. In chapter 1, he learned the lesson of God’s providence and patience, that you can’t run away from God. In chapter 2, he learned the lesson of God’s pardon, that God forgives those who call upon Him. In chapter 3, he learned the lesson of God’s power as he saw a whole city humble itself before the Lord. Now he had to learn the lesson of God’s pity, that God has compassion for lost sinners like the Ninevites; and his servants must also have compassion. (The phrase in 4:11 “and also much cattle” reminds us of God’s concern for animal life. God preserves both man and beast (Ps. 36:6), and the animals look to God for their provision (104:10–30). God has made a covenant with creation (Gen. 9:1–17); and even in the Law of Moses, He shows concern for His creation (Deut. 22:6–7; Lev. 22:26–28). An understanding of God is the basis for a true ecology.) It seems incredible, but Jonah brought a whole city to faith in the Lord and yet he didn’t love the people he was preaching to!

     The people who could not “discern between their right hand and their left hand” (4:11) were immature little children (Deut. 1:39), and if there were 120,000 of them in Nineveh and its suburbs, the population was not small. God certainly has a special concern for the children (Mark 10:13–16); but whether children or adults, the Assyrians all needed to know the Lord. Jonah had pity on the vine that perished, but he didn’t have compassion for the people who would perish and live eternally apart from God.

     Jeremiah and Jesus looked on the city of Jerusalem and wept over it (Jer. 9:1, 10; 23:9; Luke 19:41), and Paul beheld the city of Athens and "was greatly distressed” (Acts 17:16, NIV), but Jonah looked on the city of Nineveh and seethed with anger. He needed to learn the lesson of God’s pity and have a heart of compassion for lost souls.

W. W. Wiersbe, (1996) Be Amazed (Minor Prophets): Restoring an Attitude of Wonder and Worship (The BE Series Commentary)