Lessons from a Well-Prepared Prayer (w13 10/15)

Now on to this week’s study.

Paragraph 2 makes the point that we should imitate the Israelites of Nehemiah’s day and not let our mind drift during our meetings.  Good counsel, but they are overlooking one key element.  Ezra and the other Levites were reading from God’s word.  God’s word is vibrant and enthralling.  Quite a contrast to our weekly fare.  We spend precious little time in our meetings reading from God’s word. Instead we engage in repetitive parts dealing with Organizational topics.  Consider this past week’s BS/TMS/SM.  The Bible Study covered the most basis of information on the organization.  We spent 30 minutes covering 8 or 9 short, simplistic man-authored paragraphs, in contrast to a mere 10-minute discussion of 6 long information rich chapters of the book of Revelation.  How about making our Bible Study a true Bible Study? Or, failing that, call it what it really is, a WT Publication study.  Of course, that’s not all.  During the service meeting we spent another 30 minutes discussing what we accomplished in our most recent tract campaign, how youths can praise Jehovah by preaching at school and how we are going to go about studying our next publication in the Bible Study.  We’ve heard this all before.   Hundreds of times.  Recently, I’ve learned many perception-altering and life-changing truths from the Bible that in 50 years of dedicated service I’d never known.  Why did I not learn this at our meetings?  Why instead do I get the same repetitive drills, policies, peer pressure directives, and organizational instruction week after week, month after month, and year after year, and decade after decade?

It is any wonder that my mind wanders?

Ironically, this particular study Watchtower Study is a deviation from the norm in that it spends a lot of time discussing the Bible verse by verse.  It’s a bit of a hodgepodge with no real theme, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some valid lessons that can be gained from it.  I think we’d all prefer even a hodgepodge bible consideration to a well-organized and thematic indoctrination study.

Paragraph 11 states: “The name Jehovah means “He Causes to Become,” signifying that God, through progressive action, causes his promises to come true.”  Actually, God’s name in Hebrew is derived from a verb which cannot be given a single meaning.  Its meaning changes based on context.  It can mean  “He exists”; “He will exist”; “He is” to name just some.  I haven’t found any basis for “He Causes to Become” outside of the Organization.  If someone can give us an independent source for this, I’d appreciate it.  To my knowledge there are no Hebrew scholars connected with headquarters.  However, if this is an accurate rendering of the meaning behind the name, I’m sure some Hebrew scholar somewhere has written about it.