Amos 4:13,  “For, lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what [is] his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The LORD, The God of hosts, [is] his name.”

A wounded deer leaps the highest.  Emily Dickerson

This is one of those verses that you read a grocery list and pass right over the chocolate ice cream without batting an eye.  God forms the mountains, creates the wind, declares to man his thoughts, makes the morning darkness… woooo, wait a minute, back up, declares to man his thoughts?  When was the last time God declared His thoughts to you?   Apparently this is just as real and certain as a mountain, the wind and the sun rising in the morning.  What are God’s thoughts?   What is a thought?  I tell you with the way things have been going lately I would sure like to know God’s thoughts.  Fifty years from now God and I are going to sit on some street corner in heaven and He is going to explain a few things to me.  Want to join me, maybe we can sort of like gang up on Him and He will have to share some insight into what He was thinking when we got that doctor’s report, that layoff notice,  that foreclosure or the million and one other things that just doesn’t make sense.

You know there are some people who have this mistaken idea that I am a pretty smart guy, that I can figure things out.  Well, I am here to tell you that there are some things you can never figure out, there are just things I cannot figure out and I sure would like to know just what God was thinking when He pulled off a few of His stunts in my life.  Then you’ve got this barefoot, peasant prophet telling me that God declares His thoughts to me and he apparently made this declaration under the inspiration of God.  Well, I am ready God, tell me what you are thinking because I sure can’t figure it out.

Ok enough ranting, back to the Hebrew lesson.  The Hebrew word for thought that is used here is sechu. God is declaring or telling man his sechu.  The word telling or declaring must be interpreted before I tell you the what sechu means and the origins of sechu (thoughts).  The word declaring or telling is magid which comes from the Semitic root word MG and the Persian word magi where we get out modern word magic.  The Hebrew root is magad  which is a loan word from the Arabic meaning what is most precious. To be fair, Davidson in his lexicon claims this is in a Hiphal form and hence the root word is nagad  which is an Akkadian word which means to make a declaration that is clear, straight forward, or as we would say, looking into your eyes and saying it.  I believe the prophet was making a play on words and the intent of the Persian, Arabic, and Akkadian roots were all intended to play into this expression.  In other words when God magads He is in some supernatural way  looking us  directly into our eyes, before our faces  and declares his sechu (thoughts).

He makes His sechu (thoughts) as plain as that scratch on our nose from our last fall. Sechu also comes from a Semitic root SK which is where we get the Hebrew word sacha which means to worship.  I found SK used in a Ugaritic text which tells the story of the goddess Anat  who fell in love with a mortal man entered into an intimacy with him. The word used for that intimacy, that expression of total love, was SK.  The Masoretes made the first letter a Sine rather than Shin which would make the root word shayach which means to meditate or make a complaint. This difference between the Sine which would make the word sacha (to be intimate) and the Shin which would  make the word shayach (to meditate on a complaint) is done with  the placing of a dot on the right side rather than the left side of the Shin. With just one dot the Masoretic text  changed intimacy to complaining. That dot was not in the original inspired text, it was placed there by man and although Christians hold the Masoretic text up as being almost inspired, the Jews don’t and are not afraid to disagree with the Masoretes.  I too disagree and I believe God does not look into man’s eyes and share his sechu (thoughts) or his complaints or even meditates on His complaints about man.  I believe God looks into man’s eyes and declares his deep intimate love for Him.

Yesterday, as I was waiting in my bus for one of my wheel chair clients a flock of seagulls landed in the parking lot.  Seagulls are migrating at this time and pass over Lake Michigan and often come inland to find food.  So as I was sharing my Egg McMuffin with one of the seagulls he walked up to me, opened his mouth and said, “Yik.”  He was just giving his regards to a friend of mine that I was e-mailing at the time. However, I just paused to watch this seagull as he began to dance around and fluff up his feathers for me. His feathers were pure white, almost like fur, with little areas of pure black.  The contrast was so beautiful, he was so beautiful.  He and his friends just danced around my bus showing themselves off. If someone walked by they would just politely move away, totally unflustered and then return for more Egg McMuffin.  I could not help but think that only a God of pure love could have created such beauty.  But why create such a beautiful creature. Maybe because the pure heart of that creature made me begin to feel the loving presence the sechu of God. Even as the birds took off to continue their migration, I continued to bask in the warm glowing intimacy of God.  With that little piece of His creation  God looked me in the eye and  in a supernatural way declared to me that I was the most precious thing to him. That is the meaning of magid (declare).  And in this magid I found sechu (loving intimacy) realizing that He was the most precious thing to me.  Suddenly all my problems no longer matter.  Emily Dickerson once said that the wounded deer leaps the highest.  All my problems all my wounds only caused me to leap higher into the arms of Jesus. It only causes me to opens my heart further so I am able to hear the words that my feathered friends, God’s created messengers, were trying to speak to me.