The Book Of Mysteries: 14-Day DevotionalSample

The Shannah

He came to me at night.
"What is a year?" asked the teacher.
"Three hundred sixty-five days," I answered.
"But in the holy language of Scripture it's more than that. It's called the shannah …and it contains a secret. The word shannah is linked to the number two."
"I don't get the connection."
"Shannah can mean the second, the duplicate, or the repeat. In the course of nature the year is the repeating of what has already been ...the winter, the spring, the summer, and the fall, the blossoming of flowers and their withering away, the rebirth of nature and its dying, the same progression, the same replaying of what already was. So a year is a shannah, a repetition. And now you have a new year before you. And what kind of year will it be?"
"What do you mean?"
"The nature of nature is to repeat, just as we live, by nature, as creatures of habit. We gravitate toward doing that which we've done before, the same routines and courses, even when those routines and courses are harmful to us. So what will the shannah, this new year, be for you?"
"Well if the year means repeat, I guess I don't have much of a choice. It will mostly be the same as the one before."
"But you do have a choice," he said. "You see, shannah has a double meaning. It not only means the repeat ...it also means the change."
"How can the same word mean the opposite?"
"The same way the year ahead of you can be either. The way of the world is to repeat, but the way of God is the way of newness and change. You can't know God and not be changed by knowing Him. And His will is that the year, the shannah ahead, be not a time of repetition but of change, of new beginnings, new steps, of breaking out of the old. And if you want to experience a year of new things, you must choose to live not in the repetition of the natural, but in the newness of the supernatural. Choose to walk not in your will but in the will of Him who is beyond the natural and beyond all that is old. As it is written, He makes all things new. Open up your life to the newness of His will, and you will walk in the newness of life and in the shannah of change."

The Mission: Today, step out of your old ways, habits, and steps. Do what you've never done before but should have. Walk in the newness of the Spirit.