Carolyn E. Jacobs

This week’s name is Miqweh Yisrael, the Hope of Israel. In her book Praying the Names of God for 52 Weeks, Ann Spangler quotes one of my favorite passages. 5 “This is what Yahweh says: Cursed is the person who trusts humans, who makes flesh and blood his strength and whose heart turns away from Yahweh. 6 He will be like a bush in the wilderness. He will not see when something good comes. He will live in the dry places in the desert, in a salty land where no one can live. 7 Blessed is the person who trusts Yahweh. Yahweh will be his confidence. 8 He will be like a tree that is planted by water. It will send…

Hope. What a beautiful word. Dictionary.com offers the synonyms of longing, aspiration, and expectancy. Yes, and it’s so much more when we’re talking about the hope we have in Yahweh. It’s something we’re waiting for with confidence that it will be accomplished. Would it be irreverent to say that God has a flair for the dramatic? He provided a ram when Abraham’s hand was raised to kill Isaac. (Genesis 22) He whittled Gideon’s forces down to 300 men before he defeated Midian’s army. (Judges 7) He used a shepherd boy to single handedly defeat a giant.(1 Samuel 17) He let the Judeans sweat with the Assyrian army encamped around Jerusalem then…

Growing up, I battled tremendous anxiety. My stomach would be in knots every morning before school. I was terrified that I would make a fool of myself in front of my classmates. To me, that meant anything from tripping on the playground to getting less than an A+ on an assignment. I did my best to fly under the radar, and if I got through the day without embarrassment, I considered it a win. Was that stupid? Yes. And more than a little prideful. You’ve heard the adage, “Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less.” Well, back then, I hadn’t. And I wouldn’t have understood it…

The name of God for week 21 in Ann Spangler’s Praying the Names of God for 52 Weeks is judge, shophet. What comes to mind? A fusty, crusty curmudgeon who’s all too willing to bang his gavel and declare, “Guilty?” When I was a child, that’s what I thought. I had this vague idea that God was watching me, shaking his head while cataloguing my faults on a clipboard with a pen whose red ink never ran out. Well, I was wrong. So wrong. He’s a just and merciful judge who understands our weaknesses. He took my punishment upon himself and removed my sin as far as the east is from the…

Dwell – Abide – Take Refuge Back in the ’70s, I ordered the Book of Lists on a Scholastic Book Order. I loved looking at all the lists of useless information. Windiest Cities. Longest Rivers. Stupidest Criminals. The book calls itself a compendium of curious information. If memory serves, one of the lists was the most euphonious words, words that were most pleasing to the ear. Words like golden and hush and aurora, ones that evoke a visceral response of pleasure. This week’s name of God instilled a longing, no, a yearning for what it promised. Dwelling place – refuge – shield – fortress – strong tower. What does it…