June 27, 2021: Under the Palm
Judges 4:1-10, 12-16
Rev. Rhonda Blevins
Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, now that Ehud was dead. So the Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. Sisera, the commander of his army, was based in Harosheth Haggoyim. Because he had nine hundred chariots fitted with iron and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years, they cried to the Lord for help. Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time. She held court under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites went up to her to have their disputes decided. She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, “The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead them up to Mount Tabor. I will lead Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.’” Barak said to her, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.” “Certainly I will go with you,” said Deborah. “But because of the course you are taking, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman.” So Deborah went with Barak to Kedesh. There Barak summoned Zebulun and Naphtali, and ten thousand men went up under his command. Deborah also went up with him. When they told Sisera that Barak son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor, Sisera summoned from Harosheth Haggoyim to the Kishon River all his men and his nine hundred chariots fitted with iron. Then Deborah said to Barak, “Go! This is the day the Lord has given Sisera into your hands. Has not the Lord gone ahead of you?” So Barak went down Mount Tabor, with ten thousand men following him. At Barak’s advance, the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera got down from his chariot and fled on foot. Barak pursued the chariots and army as far as Harosheth Haggoyim, and all Sisera’s troops fell by the sword; not a man was left.
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The other day I was working on my computer, using Adobe Photoshop, when an error message popped up, “Cannot complete this task because your scratch disk is full.” I didn’t even know I had a “scratch disk,” let alone did I know it was full. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t use the program, nor could I save what I had been working on. With every click, every attempt to manipulate the program or even to save my file, “Your scratch disk is full.” Ok, computer, you win. What the heck is a “scratch disk?”
According to Wikipedia, “scratch space is space on the hard disk drive that is dedicated for storage of temporary user data.” Apparently, when you begin to fill up your hard drive with permanent data, you cut down on the amount of space available for scratch space. Then the program doesn’t work. Then the preacher cusses.
Then a couple of days after the cussing fit, the preacher recognizes that the message, “Your scratch disk is full” is a perfect metaphor for life.
You see, our brains are a bit like a computer “scratch disk”—we have a limited capacity for processing information. Get this: through your five senses, your body is sending 11 million bits of information to your brain every second according to Encyclopedia Brittanica—you’ve had 165 million bits of information sent to your brain just in the time it has taken me to complete this sentence.
10 million bits per second through your eyes
1 million bits per second through your skin
100,000 bits per second through your ears
100,000 bits per second through smell
1,000 bits per second through taste
You want to know how many of those bits your brain can process? About 50 bits per second.[1] That’s roughly 0.000455 percent. In other words: BIG BIG BIG DATA (itty bitty processor).
All that to say, we have limited capacity to process information. It doesn’t take long to fill up our “scratch disk.” And when our “scratch disk” is full, we don’t work at optimum performance levels.
We have 11 million bits of information coming at us every second, and then we choose to add more stimuli. Did you know that in 2021, the average American adult spends 666 minutes per day, over eleven hours daily, consuming media? [2]
Can we say . . . overstimulated? Can we say . . . information overload?
Then there’s the fact that we are living in a rapidly changing world. You may have heard an acronym that describes life these days—the acronym is VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
In other words, we live in chaotic times, and many of our choices about how we spend our time and what stimuli we invite into our lives just contributes to the chaos.
But we’re not the first people to be surrounded by chaos.
Take the book of Judges from which we read a moment ago. The entire book of Judges chronicles a time of chaos for the people of Israel. You see, after the time of Moses and Joshua, but before the monarchy was established, there was the period of the Judges. Judges chapter 2 describes how the people would turn away from the Lord to wickedness and idolatry, enemies would have their way with the Israelites, then the Lord would raise up a Judge to lead them back on the straight and narrow. It was a cyclical pattern. This kind of chaos was what Deborah inherited when God raised her up to be the Judge over Israel.
Now Deborah is the Judge over Israel. King Jabin of Canaan has oppressed the Israelites for 20 years by the time Deborah comes on the scene. And the Israelites are terrified of Jabin, his military commander Sisera, and the 900 chariots of iron they flaunt. You know how many chariots Israel has at this time? Zero. Zero chariots. To try any kind of stand against Jabin and Sisera will be like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Not real smart. Not a great situation for Deborah to step into. Chaos from within. Chaos from without. Just . . . chaos.
So, as you see, we are not the first people to live in a time of chaos. In fact, every generation has its share of chaos.
So Deborah steps into a situation marked by chaos. But Deborah is both charismatic and wise; she is shrewd and not afraid to take a risk. Deborah is known for sitting under a palm tree in the hill country, and there she holds court, and there she seeks God’s wisdom, and there she crafts her military strategy against a far more powerful foe. A strategy, we learn as we keep reading, that is extraordinarily successful. Israel’s 10,000 troops defeat Jabin’s armies, their 900 chariots of iron get stuck in the mud in a raging storm. At the end of chapter 5, we learn that Israel will know 40 years of peace after Deborah’s unlikely success on the battlefield.
How did Deborah do it? How did she craft such a brilliant strategy? How did she lead her people to success on the battlefield, even though they brought a knife to a gunfight?
Because she sat under the palm. You see, there under that palm, she got up above the chaos swirling around in the world below. She created space for connection with God, she carved out room for the still, small whispers that granted wisdom and insight. She made sure her scratch disk never got too full, because she spent time under the palm.
How about you? How’s your “scratch disk” these days? Are you operating at peak performance, or do you need to do some work, create some space so that you can hear the whispers of God, like Deborah did under the palm?
Know this: our culture does not value this kind of quiet, solitary work. It runs counter to that puritan work ethic, that “drive until you drop” mentality. It runs counter to the message we get from our culture that tells us our lives only have value when we are producing.
But any good farmer knows that the earth must lie fallow from time to time, so that it can offer peak production. The same is true for us. We must lie fallow from time to time; we must find our equivalent to time under the palm, away from the chaos of a media-obsessed culture.
How do we do this, practically speaking? I have an acronym to help us think about this—the acronym is “PALM.” Here’s what we might consider doing every day to free up mental space—best practices from spiritual teachers as well as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies:
Pause: We pause ourselves from productivity and busyness. We also pause new information from coming in by turning off the television or stepping away from our computers or phones or tablets. We need to pause each and every day for our mental health, and to operate at peak levels. In order for this become a habit, it helps to make it a part of a daily routine. Pause in the morning before other people wake up. Pause before bed. Pause.
Align: We align ourselves with God’s will—some might call it “setting an intention.” We align ourselves with a higher purpose, a higher power, that which is eternal, beyond the tyranny of the urgent. Align.
Liberate: We free our minds from all the worries and concerns taking up bandwidth, limiting our processing capacity. Perhaps we can simply detach from our thoughts. One practical way to do this is to keep a journal and download all the things you’re holding in your brain, and externalize them, like placing them in an external hard drive to free up space on the main drive. It’s why we keep calendars, so that we don’t have to remember all those dates in our brains. We liberate our minds by keeping a calendar. We can do that with many items taking up brain space, then we can choose what to commit mind power to. When we have no mental space, we have no choice—we are controlled by our emotions instead of the other way around. We don’t have to live like that. If we can free our minds, we can free our lives. Liberate.
Meditate: Contemplative prayer or meditation is not only a spiritual practice but a powerful tool for freeing up mental space that the whispers of God might be heard. The three steps I named already, pause, align, liberate, are encapsulated in this one practice. Meditate.
Pause. Align. Liberate. Meditate. PALM.
When we take time, like Deborah, under the PALM, wisdom is sure to follow. And no matter what chaos swirls around us, no matter the threat of 900 chariots of iron, we can be clear headed, seeking God’s wisdom, acting accordingly.
So may you find your place under the PALM this week! And there find your power under the PALM.
[1] https://www.britannica.com/science/information-theory/Physiology
[2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-media-consumption-has-changed-in-2021/