Healing Well of Miriam

When I was five years old, my dad was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia.  My family lived in a Columbus neighborhood of modest brick ranch-style houses, where the moms stayed home with the kids during the day and knew all the neighbors.  The moms frequently sat together outside and talked, while the kids ran all over the place, having a great time just being kids.  It was 1960!   

My family was Southern Baptist.  The family next door to us was Methodist, and the two on either side were Catholic.  All were devout church-going people.  I don’t remember arguments, but there were discussions about the Bible.  Most subjects my mom’s friends would discuss didn’t interest me very much, but the Bible was a different matter.  On those occasions, I was all ears, because THAT was my very favorite subject in the world!  While it was not considered “polite” for a child to listen in on “grown-up conversation,” that was where the “good stuff” was being discussed.  So, I would hang on the edges of the group and try really, really hard not to interject my opinions or questions.  (Sometimes that proved too hard, but my parents didn’t seem too awfully upset by that.)

One day these ladies were sitting together outside and talking about the End Times.  Our next-door neighbor (the Methodist one) said, “Oh, it just sounds horrible!  I hope I’m not alive to go through all that.”  I didn’t say a word, but I thought very loudly, “I KNOW I will be!”  I never really knew if that was a wishful promise to myself or a strong intuition of the future.   

Over the years I’d hear snatches around kitchen tables.  I liked listening to my dad and the men talk even more than the women, because they would go deeper and talk longer.  It was worth forgoing play to hear the REALLY “good stuff.”  As I got a bit older, though, I had a hard time not chiming in with my opinions.  I was sure they all wanted to hear what I had to say.  Somehow, in my mind, this type of conversation did not…or should not…have an age limit.  This was so much better than the kid’s Sunday School version.  I loved it!  My mind grabbed every idea, and my imagination soared.  My dad did talk with me at length about spiritual things and later talked about my asking him questions, as a child, that he was not able to answer.    

After my dad retired from the US Army in 1965, we lived in Graceville, Florida, where he attended divinity school to study for the ministry.  During our church’s summertime revival there was an “old fashioned night,” for which people dressed up in 19^th-century clothing and the sanctuary was lit with oil lamps.  But the most memorable thing about that night was the sermon…on the battle of Gog and Magog.  I had NEVER heard this!  It was another piece, and WOW!  I was mesmerized, listening to the preacher say: “And as Israel buries the dead, they’ll say, ‘God did this; God did this!”  Ezekiel described God performing a miracle to save Israel in a battle in which all the nations try to annihilate her!

As a child or as an adult, it was my Soul listening.  No.  There are no age limits to the Soul.  The intelligence of the Soul even surpasses the mind.  Something deep inside me drew my attention to those “grown-up conversations.”  I had to hear; I had to know.  What did Israel’s Prophets say?  The Prophets of Israel foretold a lot.  Many years later, after converting to Judaism, I would learn that the Sages of Israel have explained a lot.      

That five-year-old girl was right.  I have lived to see the End Times.  These are the days in which we are living.  But what does that mean?  Is there cause for alarm, as our neighbor in Georgia feared?  Or is there something else…some miraculous purpose that the consolation of Israel’s Prophets and Sages indicates?  As time unfolds, their words come to form a clearer picture, and yes, there is tremendous purpose.  This purpose, called Redemption, is nothing less than restoration of the Creation state…the world before “the fall.”  And each Soul in the world has a part to play.