When I was a boy growing up in Baltimore, every now and then I would go over to my grandmother's house and spend the weekend.

Usually on Saturday mornings I would get up and watch my favorite cartoons. The leading one was Mighty Mouse for those old enough to remember.

Sometimes there would be a problem and that is if there would be a storm on Saturday morning while I was watching my favorite cartoons.

If there was a thunderstorm on Saturday morning while I'm watching my favorite cartoons, a great theological statement came from my grandmother.

A little did I know then, the depth of the theology she was teaching me, but she would tell me during those times to turn off the television and the reason she gave it was because God was talking.

The thunderstorm that interrupted the program meant to remove the distraction because what was happening out there, God had something to say where He wanted our undivided attention.

When you look at what's happening in the world today, whether it's in Israel now or in your life personally, how do you relate when there are disruptions?

The second most difficult book to interpret in the New Testament is the Book of Hebrews. The Book of Revelation is by far the leading one because of all of its imagery.

But the Book of Hebrews has an assumption. And the assumption of the Book of Hebrews is that you are familiar with the old covenant with Jewish history, with the sacrificial system because he's writing to Christian Jews who are facing hard times, difficult circumstances, and an amalgamation of challenges.

The Book of Hebrews has one theme. Don't give up. The Book of Hebrews has one subject. Don't throw in the towel. In spite of the challenges, the difficulties, and the uncertainties that we're facing these Christian Jews to whom he writes in the Book of Hebrews, he tells them, I don't want you to quit just because things seem out of sorts.

He comes to chapter 12. And in chapter 12 of the Book of Hebrews, he helps us to be able to relate to what you see going on in the world today globally and maybe in your world personally.

He says in verse 25, see to it, that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if those that not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven.

For his voice shook the earth then. But now he is promising yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.

This expression yet once more denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken as of created things so that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.

He says there's a whole lot of shaking going on. And he says when there is shaking that is the interruption of the normal order of things when things get discombobulated, when things get out of sorts, it is because God is talking.

God has something to say when chaos and confusion becomes normalized in our experience or in our world. He is saying don't refuse him when things are out of order but pay close attention because he has something new to say.

Throughout the scriptures when God wanted to do something new it would come on the back drop of something out of order that was taking place.

A crisis or a contradiction would lead to something new God was up to. When Israel was about to leave Egypt they found themselves caught in a contradiction.

God told them to go but then he tells Pharaoh to chase them. They find themselves between a rock and a hard place. The red sea and the Egyptian army and it was in the middle of this crisis created and authorized by God that he would perform the biggest miracle in the history of the Jewish people.

The opening of the red sea he would allow a crisis to do something he had never done before. When he was ready to move Abraham from a promise he had made in Genesis chapter 12 to an oath he was ready to fulfill.

He would tell Abraham to do something that God would contradict himself on. He tells Abraham to kill Isaac but that's the very same God who condemns murder in Genesis 9.

So he condemns murder in Genesis 9. In Genesis 22 he tells Abraham to kill Isaac that's God contradicting God by his own command. And yet it would be in this contradiction that did not make sense that God would do the miracle that would move according to what he told Abraham from a promise which is always what God is going to do to an oath.

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