In poetic fashion Deborah recounts the social condition of Israel before her rule and the Lord’s deliverance. Deborah’s lyrics describes the days preceding her rise to power when Shamgar became a national hero and before Jael secured the Deborah’s battle with Sisera. Shamgar and Jael were both deliverers for Israel, yet neither of them were Israelites. Shamgar had a foreign name similar to the Hurrian’s of Anatolia (modern Turkey) who appear to worship Anath, Baal’s sister, the fierce goddess of war. Jael, the woman who killed the Canaanite General Sisera in fulfillment of Deborah’s prediction, was a member of the nomadic Kenite tribe from Midian who joined Israel in the wilderness after they became Moses’ in-laws through his marriage to Zipporah.

Deborah’s lyrics continue to describe these days:

• Abandoned highways
• Fearful travelers who avoided being robbed by not using the main roads
• Trade ceased and the economy collapsed
• Villagers would not engage in self-defense and after disarmament, they could
• Israel had been disarmament in order to secure peace treaties with the Canaanites
• New gods where chosen (to accommodate the peace treaties with the Canaanites)

Then in the midst of a society riddled by crime, suffering from economic collapse and unable to defend itself, they were attacked. War came to their “peaceful,” crime infested, financially broke, unarmed city gates, since “not a shield or spear was seen among forty thousand in Israel.”

It was at this point Deborah had enough! And, Deborah, a mother in Israel arose, and the Lord arose with her, to guide and deliver Israel out of this cultural abyss.

Now Deborah sings lyrics of the Lord’s deliverance and the incredible turn of events Israel had experience. But, deliverance is not the same thing as transformation. Since Israel will remain uneducated concerning the things of the Lord and untransformed in their souls, they will simply live to be oppressed and conquered another day.

"If God is for anybody anywhere, it's for everybody everywhere."
 — Edward Lawlor

In 598 Augustine of Canterbury asked Pope Gregory directions for the organizaiton of the church in England.

Augustine asked:"Whereas the faith is one and the same, are there different customs in different churches? and is one custom of masses observed in the Holy Roman Church, and another in that of the Gauls?"

Pope Gregory's answer: “You know, my brother, the custom of the Roman Church, in which you remember you were brought up. But my advice is that you should make a careful selection of anything that you have found either in the Roman or of the Gauls, or any other Church, which may be more acceptable to Almighty God, and diligently teach the Church of the English, which as yet is new in the faith, whatsoever you can gather from the several Churches. For things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Choose, therefore, from each Church those things that are pious, religious and seemly, and when you have, as it were incorporated them, let the minds of the English be accustomed thereto.”