Time to Get Up and Get Moving

And Deborah said to Barak, “Up! For this is the day in which the LORD has given Sisera into your hand. Does not the LORD go out before you?” Judges 4:14

Like most of you, I have an alarm that I set before bed every night to wake me up every morning. If I didn’t set that alarm, I wouldn’t naturally get up in time to do all the things I must do in a day. Without the alarm, I would just remain in my natural state, sleeping. So, I set my alarm, which every morning, says, Get up. Get Going. Time to get moving.

I spend quite a bit of time thinking about how we can change our behavior. Behavior, specifically habitual behavior, is difficult to change permanently. We can diet for a few days or weeks, but usually we return to our normal eating habits because that’s simply what we’ve always done. To truly change an ingrained pattern of behavior requires a significant disruption to our routine. If there is no significant disruption, it’s our nature remain in the rut that we’ve created. Without some alarm to jolt us from our slumber, it’s our nature to remain in bed.

In my drug addiction, I repeated a self-destructive behavior so often that it became compulsory – it wasn’t choice anymore. That’s the disease of addiction. It wasn’t that I had no choice at all though. In my addiction, I could choose to disrupt that behavior. The problem was that I was in a rut, and I knew that getting out of it would be uncomfortable. So, for me, it took others who were willing to disrupt my life enough to waken me from my slumber. Get up. Time to get moving.

That was the voice of Deborah in today’s passage. In the story, God raised up Deborah to deliver God’s people from their enemies. Deborah, in turn, commanded the leader of Israel’s army, Barak, to gather that army. Barak gathered the army in the mountains, but then remained there, in safety. With their enemy arrayed on the plains below, Deborah yelled at Barak. Get up! The time for doing nothing is over. It’s time to get moving (my paraphrase).

It’s our nature to remain in the comfortable misery of our ruts. Disruption is more uncomfortable and so, we don’t naturally choose it. If we want to change though, we must be willing to choose that which would disrupt our lives. We must listen to those who would awaken us from our slumber. And when we see those close to us stuck in their own ruts, we must be willing to be that voice that says, Get up! It’s time to get moving.