November 19, 2016
THE SHANNAH
While contemplating the events of the past year, I was reading a passage called “The Shannah.” What exactly is a year? In the Holy language of Scripture a year is associated with the word, “shannah” and it is linked to the number “two.” “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. A year is a “shannah” a repetition.
We almost have a new year before us. What kind of year will it be? “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.. “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. 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 new things, you have a choice. Either to continue the repetition of the natural, or take steps towards the newness of the supernatural.
As our new year approaches, 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 Book of Mysteries)
