Hear this as the Spirit of Freedom that resides richly in the heart of every human soul.
"He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist."
If you have any familiarity with the Bible you know this is the legendary passage from the Hebrew Scriptures that predicts the Messiah. Christians hear this as a prophecy of Jesus.
The heading in my Harper Study Bible understates, "The Age of Messiah."
It is happening in the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Wisconsin and Ohio. The refrain we are hearing over and over is that these are "leaderless" uprisings. Update this with a non-sexist lens and these ancient passages hold up quite well on substance. Their relevance is enduring.
"The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him,
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord,
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord."
The text even takes a non-violent turn at its crescendo:
"The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra's den, the young child will put its hand into the viper's nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."
We are in the throes of a major mindset shift, a new reality, a new birth, a new world. The "Messiah" isn't exclusively male. There isn't "A" Messiah. The pervasive means is non-violent. With this emerging consciousness and our interconnecting tech capacities, we have entered the Age of Everyday Messiahs.