A Line in the Sand

On the morning after the U.S. presidential election I awoke and heard the Voice of the Lord say, "There is now a line drawn in the sand." This quickened powerfully in my spirit. The line in the sand is almost palpable in these post-election days, as we feel such a powerful separation occurring between those who have chosen Yahweh's precepts and values over anyone else's. I think it is the separation, the line in the sand, that has made many of us feel sad. We do not like division and separation. For most of us, the division is even affecting our immediate families. At my workplace I have heard stories of families that have now separated to the point of no longer speaking to one another.

Tim Wingate gave an illustration of ancient family division and fighting from the book of Judges:

5 The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan opposite Ephraim. And it happened when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, "Let me cross over," the men of Gilead would say to him, "Are you an Ephraimite?" If he said, "No," 6 then they would say to him, "Say now, 'Shibboleth.'" But he said, "Sibboleth," for he could not pronounce it correctly. Then they seized him and slew him at the fords of the Jordan . Thus there fell at that time 42,000 of Ephraim."
Through history, a shibboleth has come to be a kind of linguistic password: A way of speaking or writing that identifies one as a member of a group. Today, it has also come to mean a point of difference and division. A person whose way of speaking or believing, as evidenced by actions, violates a shibboleth and is therefore identified as an outsider and thereby excluded by the group. It is an idiom in the nature of the idiomatic cliché, “to draw a line in the sand.”

Are we headed toward a time when believers will have a "password" such as shibboleth in order to know whom we can trust and join in community? Is the line of sand so entrenched now that Jesus' prophecy that father and son, mother and daughter would betray one another is a reality for us? Perhaps.

But a glimmer of hope remains within me, as I read the story about the wicked city of Nineveh. When Jonah had had enough sea-sickness and time-out in the bowels of the whale, and finally obeyed God and called Nineveh to repent, the entire city fell on their knees, cried out to the God of Israel, and was restored to His heart of blessing, peace, and prosperity by returning to His Torah. Pray for a Jonah in our time, and pray for the restoration of a nation once blessed by its foundation based upon the laws of Yahweh. A mighty wave of His Spirit could wash away a line in the sand.