“This
ambiguity of the landscape and the divine countenance alike is a theme that
echoes like clap thunder across the entire Puritan experience” (Lane 133).
Putting
spirit to the ground, we often try to understand things unseen in terms of
things observed by man. One night, I was contemplating if I needed to go to
church for the Friday church service being held. I wasn’t feeling up to it, but
I also felt I needed to go in my inner witness. So upon leaving the house and
getting on the street, I noticed as I was driving that I was getting all the
green lights at the right time to arrive at church on time. Out of all twenty
some lights up Warwick to my church, maybe only one, maximum two went red on
me. I began thinking “God must have really wanted me to go.” Upon arriving, it
was an awesome time and my heart was changed. The things I was trying to
understand in the unseen, we now made open in the perception through what
seemed to be the urgency of God working through the lights so I could arrive in
a timely manner. Similarly, the Puritans held very closely the ties of the land
to the divine favor or disposition of God either to prosperity or judgment. To
the Puritans, they saw the land of America as a new promised land given to them
by God to practice religious freedoms they were once persecuted for. This was almost
akin to the Israelites coming out from their bondage in Egypt to the promised
land. In some ways, they even saw themselves in a covenant to God similar to
the one of the old testament of the bible and used the language contained in
the book. To me, the lines between the land or circumstances around me were
being blurred with the countenance of God. In times of disbelief, we rely on a
lot on external factors revealing where God is at and where He is taking us.
One clear example, besides the example of God using the land of Israel to show
His pleasure or displeasure of the people’s actions, is the biblical example of
Gideon. Gideon, a man, was called by God to lead the Israelites into battle
against a rival nation. Out of fear and doubt, but also fearing God, he laid
out a wool piece of clothing in the desert and asked God to moisten and make it
wet as a sign for him to go into battle. And once God fulfilled that request,
Gideon asked for him to undo it as a last sign of direction and clarity, in
which God did. With ambiguity between the land (or situations) and God’s
countenance, God used what Gideon had to instill confidence for the battles
ahead. And to the Puritan as well as my own life, God will use His creations to
speak to us in ways our “spiritual knowledge” could never decipher, shaming the
wise and complex of the world with the foolish and simple.
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