Four Thousand-Year Old Code Can Tell Us if We've Fully Arrived

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In the pages, brave heroine Nancy Drew tapped out a Morse code message for her friends over the phone, all while talking inanely about trivial matters. The tip-tapping of her pencil on the phone receiver gave the appearance of distraction or nervousness, until studied closer. Suddenly her erratic taps spelled out a valuable message. I read spellbound, as a teen.

Codes and mysteries have always grabbed my attention so when I stumbled across a coded message from four thousand years ago, I was instantly hooked. Don Richardson in his book Eternity in their Hearts reveals an astonishing ideograph that is in the Chinese language.

Language learners in Mandarin Chinese have long loved yet wrestled with the complexity of the Chinese language. The beautiful intricate language uses a system of 214 symbols called radicals. Those radicals combine to form a staggering 30,000 to 50,000 ideographs, or word pictures!

Missionary linguists learning Mandarin suddenly noticed a wild combination of pictures in the Chinese verb "to come." Pictured in the verb "to come" is first of all the image of a man, an upside-down y shape. The man pictograph is then superimposed onto a tree. At the bottom left and right of the ideograph are two smaller lines that mean "humans." In other ideographs, those two lines mean "mankind" or "humanity." Thus the ideograph for "Come" shows humanity coming to the man on the tree. 

So the Chinese language from over 4000 years ago tells us the ultimate place we need to go, to fully arrive, to be there, to come -- Humans coming to the One on the tree. 

This Easter, how do you know if you've fully arrived? How do you know if you've "made it"? Have you gotten right with God who takes away the sins of the world? He has never left you, and is waiting right beside you.

How do you know if you've fully arrived? How do you know if you've "made it"? Have you come to the One on the tree? 

Happy Easter, friends.


Linking with Emily too. 

(Not an affiliate link.)

This Transforms How I See Easter

 Can you picture them?

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Sweet little six year old Middle Eastern boys pouring down the cobbled stone Roman streets of a remote occupied town. Young Jewish boys in Jesus' time all attended Bet Sefer at the local synagogue. Six to ten years old attended this Bet Sefer, which means House of Books or House of Knowledge, five days a week, Monday through Friday. Local temple leaders would teach them about the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, and the boys would soon have memorized all of Genesis through Deuteronomy!

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Ten through fourteen year old teens, growing taller, broader, and with their voices just starting to change, would then proceed to Bet Talmud studies at the temple, where they would study the rest of the Old Testament books. Those showing promise would continue, soon memorizing all of the Hebrew scriptures from Joshua through Malachi, including the Psalms, by the age of thirteen or fourteen years old! Many Jewish seminaries continue this memorization feat today, I'm told, in an article called "Covered in the Dust." 

By age twelve to fourteen years old, while still in the Bet Talmud, young Jewish males were learning the art of question and answering that marked an educated and intelligent person. Practicing with Torah teachers and temple leaders, they responded, fielded, and replied to the questions thrown at them. This casts new light on the story of Jesus as a twelve year old boy in the temple with the religious leaders where he is "sitting with the teachers. He was listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at how much he understood. They also were amazed at his answers." 
 

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Jesus grew up, became a rabbi himself, and invested in his disciples for three intense years. One of the teaching tools that rabbis would do with their students, I've just learned, is to start saying a line from a Bible passage, knowing that his audience would immediately be able to recognize the next lines. Since almost all Jewish males had memorized Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, there were many passages to use. Jesus often started his lessons that way, or he simply said, "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago..." and then continued with his teaching. The Hebrew audiences of his day would have instantly recognized most of his Old Testament references and tracked along with him in the rest of the chapter.

What hits me this week as we remember Jesus on the cross is something he said...

While hanging on the cross, undergoing excruciating agony, Jesus started the first line of a chapter. Educated Hebrew audiences of his day would have instantly recognized the words, and known the reference. They would have been able to recite the next words and lines, as easily as many of us know pop songs. Jesus' gasped sentence on the cross would have set in motion for them the rest of the chapter.

Curious? 

To transform your Easter week, and add fresh poignancy to Jesus' death on the cross, read through to the end of Psalm 22 in that purple link above, or on your own. There are powerful, amazing treasures all throughout that chapter. (I don't want to spoil one sliver of it for you.)

WOW!

The Song that Will Blow You Away & Change How You See Everything

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At a table with shiny olive oil spills, amid scattered bread crumbs and wrinkled Mediterranean olives, they would have pushed back their wine cups and straightened to sing.

And we've all had that -- a moment when familiar lyrics suddenly have deeper personal meaning to us, and it leaves us breathless.

I can imagine it in his voice, choked up at times as the words speak the tumult in his heart. An annual tradition, it was always this song after the sacred feast, and Jewish people everywhere were singing it tonight. But this evening, the words shook him, expressing his own feelings and thoughts so clearly: the fear and angst, the jubilation and determination, and the wild purpose of it all. 

Tucked into a familiar Bible passage about the Last Supper of Jesus, we read that Jesus and his disciples, upon finishing the Passover meal, sang a hymn and then left for the Garden of Gethsemane.

This was the night that had been culminating for the past thirty years or so. The week where he wept over Jerusalem, saying, "If only you had known what would bring you peace!" This was the night where his friend Judas would betray him to death row, and to unimaginable pain. This was the day that had been in the works for millennia.

Tiny study notes at the bottom of my page reveal that the hymn they sang was Psalm 115-118. Turning to that section, I read it, was blown away, and alternated between crying in my kitchen and yelling, "Wow, God! Wow!"

Where could we turn in our next hard stage? Where do you go when life is hard? What helps you when you're worried, afraid, and in pain? What gives you purpose?

Picture Jesus at the table, just hours before his death, saying these words in a husky choked up voice.

(This is so worth it. Take a minute or two with the above link, and read those verses aloud, or consider clicking the audio link there and letting his words wash over you.)

Can you imagine him singing this that night? Can you imagine?!

Wow! Wow.

(and linking, always linking with Ann at A Holy Experience to count gifts. This...)