It’s hard being an entrepreneur and making a success of a start-up business. You have to do everything yourself. Keep the books. See an important customer. Talk to a supplier in a different time zone. Decide on the look of a webpage. And I haven’t even begun a detailed list. It is easy to become overwhelmed.
It’s just as hard being a mother effectively raising a boisterous family. Running a home is very similar to running a small business. There are chores to be done and errands to run. You’re in charge of your children’s education (yes, even if they attend school, the buck stops with you not their teacher). You’re in charge of your family’s health and general welfare. There is inventory to maintain. (What! No more Sunny Snaps cereal?) There are clothes, toys and appliances to look after or replace. And this is not close to the complete list. It’s hard to know what to tackle when.
Success is achieved when both entrepreneur and mom manage to replace chaos with order. Sanity is retained when instead of futilely flailing around we institute organization and structure. The enemy is randomness and happenstance.
Viewing the world in which we live as random and haphazard is equally unhelpful. God cautions us not to relate to Him in a casual and mindless fashion.
And if you will … walk casually [KeRi] with me, then I will walk casually [KeRi] with you also in fury…
(Leviticus 26:27-28)
(For more insight to these verses please revisit Thought Tools Volume 5 Issue 8, Cancel Cruise Control.)
The root of the Hebrew word for casual and haphazard conduct is K-R.
For instance, the main two Biblical villains who adhere to a random worldview are the prophet Bilam and King Balak. Together they conspire to curse Israel. Here are four mentions of the K-R word for random happening that appear in their story.
…perhaps God will happen by me…
(Numbers 23:3)
So God happened by Bilam…
(Numbers 23:4)
…and I might happen to encounter the Lord over there…
(Numbers 23:15)
And the Lord happened to appear to Bilam…
(Numbers 23:16)
As always, in Hebrew whenever one Hebrew word appears to possess two meanings, we can be sure the two meanings are closely related.
The Hebrew root K-R not only means random, it also means cold and ice.
He casts forth his ice like morsels, who can stand before his cold?
(Psalms 147:17)
randomness & disorder = KR = cold & ice
It follows that ancient Jewish wisdom is telling us that randomness and disorder are closely connected to cold and ice.
Modern physics uses the word entropy to describe the extent of randomness and chaos. Entropy and its relationship to cold and ice only began to be fully understood through thermodynamics in the 19th century (Boltzmann 1877) and through statistics in the 20th century (Shannon 1948). Clearly chaos and coldness are closely connected in terms of entropy generation; a fact which 3,000 years ago, was known only to God. This is one of many reasons that I call Hebrew the Lord’s language.
Oddly enough, in English we might say to the harried mom and overwhelmed business professional, “Your enemy is chaos and disorder, stay cool!” Categorize your tasks under various headings that might correspond to the job description of employees, were you to be hiring them. For example, accounting, sales, maintenance, inventory, and so on. That way, you can put on the appropriate hat and tackle only the tasks in that category before changing hats and moving into another ‘department’. Stay cool, whether you’re a mom or a business professional, the lives of many depend upon you.
Hebrew contains mysterious and thrilling revelations about how the world REALLY works. Our book, Buried Treasure: Secrets for Living from the Lord’s Language goes into almost three dozen of these words in depth. It provides practical guidance and ‘aha’ moments both for those who can’t read a Hebrew letter and for those who are fluent in the language. Let God talk to you in His own words.
