Miracle of Moving

What a difference a week makes. Last week at this time my family and I were finishing up packing so we could move out of the town we were in, up into the mountains ,where we are now. What total insanity and chaos it was, but oh what peace and quiet we have now. We went from constant noise, from early in the morning to late at night , continuous traffic, sirens and such, to the sounds of the wind, birds and rain. What a difference.

I should point out to you that, financially speaking, we were not quite prepared to move. At the beginning of May we hadn't even been really looking , so we had started off the month paying the rent and our bills and getting the things that we usually do with out a inkling of a thought that we were going to move soon. The house we were living in had issues, mold and mildew, due to a leaky roof and a lack of insulation but after looking hard and long during February and March ,as our lease was about to end, we hadn't been successful in finding anything, so we decided, in April, that we would stay put until we could afford to buy again.
Having made that decision, once again, I learned that G-D has plans that generally do not involve our timing or even our efforts filled with hidden miracles.

On the second day of May, my wife was on line just glancing at adds for places to rent, not a hard search mind you, just kind of glancing as she was looking for something else, when she ran across an add for this place. She told me about it and showed me the pictures ( she found them on a real estate page later that day) and asked me if I thought it was worth a call. We were somewhat reluctant, because of all the fruitless searching that we had endured, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to make a call so I told her to go ahead. My wife called and talked to the owner for quite awhile, and he seemed interested in meeting us, but he told us that he had others that were ahead of us that he had to talk to and that he would call us in the next week.

We basically figured that was the last we were going to hear from him. Eight days later he called us back and wanted to know if we were still interested in looking at the house. We made the arrangements to look at in the afternoon and, to make a longish story short, shortly after we got home he called to offer us the place. This was the 10th of May. We made the arrangements to move in on the 29Th.

So we now had three less then three weeks to make arrangements to move,pick up some things that we needed, and pack. Just to add a little more fun to it, I had what was left of my bottom teeth removed right in the middle of all the packing.

 The house we found is the kind of place that we have been looking for our entire lives together. It is way out on a dirt road up on a mountain. We are surrounded by trees and usually the loudest thing we hear now is birds or the wind. It seems to us that finding this was a miracle, however the financial part was the real surprise miracle.

We had very little money to work with,especially after putting a deposit on this house, yet we needed to get a refrigerator, a propane tank, and rent a truck, not to mention paying for the gas of that truck, and still eat and live while packing. Neither one of us thought that we would make it to moving day with any money left.
Obviously we did manage to get here, but when we sat down to balance the check book,we found that we had spent more money then we actually had prior to being paid. We were trying hard to be careful with what we spent but somehow we went over and yet nothing bounced, nothing was rejected, we never noticed and here we are.

Next morning as I was pondering this I ran across a proverb that I thought I might share because it seems to answer my question as to how or even why we were able to do this with literally nothing to spare.

Proverbs 1:33 " But he who listens to me will dwell in safety, Untroubled by the terror of misfortune."

I don't suppose any of us really listen to G-D the way we should, though I'd like to think that we try, but when it became obvious to us that we weren't getting anywhere in our search we took the hint that G-D was telling us to wait and stopped and when the time was right, when we weren't really looking we found this house. The misfortune would have come on the day we moved because, technically speaking, we were flat out broke, but we weren't aware of that fact and, as I said earlier, it wasn't until we balanced the check book that we found we had some how gone over what we had.

You may come to your own conclusions. I can only tell you that we listened to G-D and here we are.
Shalom

I Am A Patsy

Proverbs 16:8, 18-19 Better a little with righteousness than a huge income with injustice...Pride goes before destruction, and arrogance before failure. Better to be humble among the poor than share the spoil with the proud. CJB
How many of you remember a day when, instead of signing pages of legalize , you shook hands over a deal, came to a verbal agreement and then stuck with what you verbally agreed upon? Probably not many of you do,especially if your a bit younger then I am.The only way that the agreement would ever be broken was if  there was some unforeseen catastrophe, but even then people went out of their way to try to keep the agreement. The only time a lawyer was involved with anything was in cases of some serious crime. Your word and your name were at stake so you didn't just agree to something out of hand.  Even when I was still a kid you could have a running tab at the store and pay it off as you went. No one on either side of the agreement expected to be ripped off in any way. You said that you would do it and that was enough. Your word was your bond and it meant something. Think about it, you did most of your business locally and you knew the people that you were doing business with. If you were the local grocer and the local mechanic needed a couple of days before he could pay his bill you helped him out, why? Because he would do the same for you if it was needed. If you were the local doctor and the farmer was a day or two late you could either go a get some produce from him to settle the bill or at the very least give him sometime to pay because he was your source of food. Honesty and integrity worked well because you did everything local and you knew each other.
How things have changed since I was a kid,  we seem to live in an essentially Mafia movie run world, full of greed and pride. How many times have you watched a Mafia type movie and the patsy is about to get shot and the proverbial bad guy looks at him and says, "nothing personal it's business" and then kills the guy? "Nothing personal" is a wonderful sentiment but it  does nothing for the guy who is now lying in a pool of his own blood with his brains splattered across the floor. This is what has changed today in the world. It has become all"business" with nothing personal about it.
Here are a couple of my own proverbial "mafia" moments. I put down a sizable chunk of change on a car, money that I really couldn't spare but I needed a car, and I admit that I did buy it as is.  However I was not expecting that one month later the engine was going to blow. The initial commentary was that they would make this right. For almost 2 months we did battle with them, the car dealership, and the financial institution, that financed the little bit we had to finance,over what was to be done. In the end we lost all of our money invested into this car and the car as well. I bought the car "as is" so it became nothing but business and I was the dead patsy.
If this was the only incident I might think it was a fluke but it seems to be just the tip of the iceberg.
A delivery driver was rude to me and my wife, for the second time, because he had to make another delivery to our house, his words " would have been simpler if you had just gone to Walmart." Sorry to have inconvienced him by having him do his job. Worse yet was the reason he was there, was because the first time he had come, the product we had ordered was smashed and wrapped in bubble wrap in the hopes that we wouldn't see it.
My wife and I recently went  into a large store and ordered a refrigerator, this being a place that I had done business with before, and a place that I had used their credit card. We went to pay for it with the card only to find out that they had canceled the card with no warning and then refused to issue me a new one because I didn't use it enough. To say that I was upset would be a mild statement. It wasn't the fact that I had to spend extra money from my pocket, though that was frustrating, it was the idea that they couldn't even send me a letter telling me that it had been canceled, no, I had to go through being publicly humiliated before I could know. Again I was the patsy.
One last example, though there are many that I could write. My wife went to order a product, after researching it on line. The man that she spoke to tried to sell her the same product but at a substantially higher price. He assumed that she hadn't looked on line first, so he was going to take her for as much as he could get. This time it failed, but how many other times has he successfully hung people out to dry with out them ever knowing? This seems to be some sort of common trend amongst "customer service" types. I have heard it said that their job isn't to help you, rather it's their job to sell you products that you don't really want or need. They get this training from the Corporate office's, so what does this say about the business world? What does this say about our nation as a whole?
Sadly we are not the only people this is happening to. It seems like something has infected the entire business world and government for that matter.
My wife and I were talking about it and we were trying to figure out why this is happening so much everywhere and it kind of hit just who these corporations are being run by. They are being run by the kids of the 60's who were told that they couldn't have prayer in school and that Bibles were a violation of church and state. These kids were taught under a completely different view point then their predecessors and now they are the CEO's with little morals to guide them. Of course this isn't true of all of them but it certainly seems to be a serious trend. I even remember a Christian business man, once telling me that even though you follow G-D you have to operate your business differently in order to survive. I disagree with that mentality. If you run your business ethically and you are known for honesty and integrity the word spreads and people will come to you to do business.
I realize that some of you who are reading this will disagree with me in my assessment of what has happened, but the evidence seems pretty clear to me. If you take out morals from the business world and toss out honesty and integrity as a guide, what then takes over? Greed,arrogance, pride, a disdain for your fellow man, especially for those in need, a spirit that says I am going to get mine and I will run over whomever I must to get it. If this isn't the problem today then please tell me what it is, because something evil has taken a hold and it is spreading everywhere.
Proverbs 16:8, 18-19 Better a little with righteousness than a huge income with injustice...Pride goes before destruction, and arrogance before failure. Better to be humble among the poor than share the spoil with the proud. CJB

Experts and Lunar Sabbaths

Have you ever wondered what it takes to become the proverbial "expert" on a particular subject? I can't begin to count how many times I have watched a news segment and they have come out with someone who is an "expert" on whatever the subject matter is; OK today we will be talking of the mating habits of the flying fruit fish and how they effect the economy of motor sports, with author and expert John Smith who's latest book " Mating Habits Of the Flying Fruit Fish and How They Effect Motor Sports" has reached number 50 in the NY Times weird books and experts categories...

To be an expert on anything today seems to be a trivial thing to accomplish, produce a book or a college paper with crayon colored pictures and you now have become the resident expert.

Having been a pastor and ordained in two different denominations, I can tell you us ordained types like to be "experts" on biblical subjects. I have a friend who has studied Greek intensely.You want to know what a Greek word means in the NT just ask him he can go into great detail on Greek and the history behind it,now while I accept that  he is good at it, and his crayon pictures are remarkable, does it make him an "expert"? As for me my thing is Hebrew words and their meanings as well as the biblical history and beliefs of the Hebrew/ Jewish people, though my coloring leaves something to be desired,I love this kind of stuff and have been studying it for years  but does that make me an "expert"?

Well for at least a few minutes over the weekend it did, and this is sort of what this post is about. A friend , who pastors a church in Florida, contacted me about a group trying to influence some of his members into following what they call the " Lunar Sabbath." The theory is that the Sabbath is to be observed according to the lunar cycle rather then the weekly cycle and that they have "proof" of this being done by the ancient Israelites. Their "experts" wax long and eloquent of how everyone, Sunday keepers and Saturday keepers are all wrong and are actually worshipping Satan rather then G-D by keeping the weekly Sabbath. To say that there are so many holes and total absurdities in this theory would be a massive understatement. You would literally have to ignore and rewrite large parts of the Bible in order for this to be even remotely true. But if you ignore the actual facts and fine tune your tinfoil hat to pick up a signal from Venus  then you would have to go and correct the Jewish people who have been following G-D and His Torah for the past 4,000 years, including the Sabbath, and pray that they don't stone you for such absurdities.

So who would you believe in this case?  Someone who claims to have some sort of new light that the rest of humanity has missed for the last 5700 years or would you choose the Jewish people who just might know a thing or two about the Sabbath or even  me as a Gentile "expert" who , at least in this case , sticks to fact rather then fiction?  I have a better idea, how about study about it for yourselves! Why take my word for it or anyone else for that matter? I am human so I could be wrong.

One of the most frustrating things about being a pastor or a Rabbi of any kind, at least for me, has been having had people follow what I say, without ever actually reading it or researching for themselves. As long as I could put some text with it many people would just nod their heads in the appropriate places. I could be explaining to them how Santa Claus is the real reason for the war of Gog-Magog or Armageddon is caused by the tooth fairy and as long as I toss in a few bible quotes, that might be vaguely relevant,  many people will just nod their heads and accept what you say because that is much easier then actually thinking for yourself.

In light of all this, I have decided that I am not going to try and prove myself or my beliefs to anyone. This whole idea of the "Lunar Sabbath" has shown me that if you are really interested in learning what I believe, or any one else for that matter, then you will do the research for your selves. I will be happy to lay out the parameters that I used, but if you really want to know then you will take the time to find out.

One last thing to consider, in light of this Lunar Sabbath idea, people like Jim Jones and David Koresh had followers that didn't know what was in the scriptures, if you won't take the time to find out for yourself then just remember this; don't drink the koolaid.
Shalom

Human Characteristics of G-D

I love the book of Isaiah. It doesn't matter how many times I read it, I always come away with something new that I missed the last time through, or I discover things about G-D, such as the idea that He is way more complicated and human like then I had ever really considered.Now before you break out the stakes and fire consider this; if we are made in the image and likeness of G-D, as we were according to Genesis, then it stands to reason that many of our characteristics can be found originating with G-D.

Did you know that G-D can be a very angry G-D? The flood came about because G-D was sorry that He had ever created man because of their continued and increasing wickedness. World wide destruction came as a result. In the time of Moses we have G-D bringing plague after plague onto the Egyptians and in the end He caused their first born to die. Time and time again the Israelite s angered G-D and He destroyed many of them, in the wilderness ,eventually killing all of those of that first generation,including Moses, before they ever reached the promised land. After the children of Israel conquered the promised land, they were punished time and again for disobeying G-D and chasing after false gods and the heathen practices of their neighbors.

 The writings of the prophets are filled with G-D's wrath, not only on the Jews, but on the entire world because of the way that the Jews are treated. If this was all there was to G-D it would be very scary, but there is much more, and again it's very human like.

 You see there is another part of this picture that we seem to forget. Like every human parent, G-D warned the people of what was to come if they didn't change their ways or come back to Him, and like every good human parent, when your child still continues to disobey, you mete out the appropriate and foretold punishment. Yes you give them a chance to change things, but eventually you have to follow up on your threats or you, as a parent, will have no credibility with your children. Why would they obey if there is no real threat of punishment?

 My son learned obedience at an early age. When I told him not to do something and he did it anyways I punished him just as I said I would. This was a lesson he learned well and he tried to pass on to one of his friends. One day while my wife and I were watching some friends kids, I warned one of the boys that if he didn't behave there was going to be punishment coming, he continued what he was doing and tried to ignore me in the process. As you can guess I wound up punishing him just as a said I would but not before my son tried to warn him by saying "you'd better do what my daddy says because he will do it." If I, as a human father, will punish my kids when it is needed, and my children figured that out, why are we so surprised when G-D does the same, especially after He warned that He would?

 Even though G-D is a G-D of justice ,and He will punish as needed and as foretold, He is also a G-D of compassion and forgiveness and peace. Go back and re read the stories. Yes He punished for a time, but then he had compassion. How many of you have ever stayed permanently angry with your children? Don't you come to that point of where you have forgiven? Does your love go away simply because you are punishing your child? I know that at least for me I don't stay angry with my children for very long and I never lose my love for them. This is called unconditional love and this is how G-D treats us as well. He punishes, He gets angry, but He also forgives and He heals. Look at Isa. 65:17-25.

 “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered,nor will they come to mind.But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create,for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.“Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; the one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child;the one who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them,or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. They will not labor in vain, nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD, they and their descendants with them. Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the LORD.

G-D ,through Isaiah, has told us that the day is coming when everything as we know it will be changed forever. What I have quoted here is but one of a multitude of texts telling of what some of the changes will be. Yes G-D gets angry,and Yes He punishes, but in the end He is compassionate and He will heal the world. Some of you may doubt that, but I would humbly submit to you that if the punishments that He warned about came to be,and they have, just ask the Jewish people, then you can also know that the healing and compassion will come as well.
 Shalom

The Hope Of Passover and Easter

This morning, as my usual habits are, I made the mistake of spending some time looking at the news on line. I say mistake because after such a wonderful weekend I was shoved back into the very real and very ugly world of politics and the workings of evil people. This past weekend saw my family and I having a full passover Seder at our house and then going to the Temple on Shabbat. I saw all the multitudes of posts of my Christian friends enjoying the wonders of Easter and I got up this morning thinking to myself that all is well in my world and the worlds of most of my friends. Then I looked at the news. Corruption, war and hatred fill the pages. People rushing headlong into insanity and destruction, and wanting to take the world with them, is the norm now instead of the exception, and this is what I greeted the day with. I don't suppose, realistically speaking, that it really changed anything about this weekend or the joy it brought to me and countless others, but I am always amazed at just how quickly all that can be forgotten in just a matter of minutes. So why bother to celebrate these holy days if it doesn't change anything in this world? I think there are two reasons, one is because it brings us closer to G-D when we remember His deliverance, and really that's what both holidays are about, and because these holy days bring us hope. Both holidays, remind us of divine deliverance from intense evil against all human odds. They remind us that even in the midst of things that we can't even begin comprehend, G-D is there. And it's a reminder to us that one individual can make a difference if they so choose. Islam can't offer that. To them we are all infidels worthy of nothing but death if we don't convert to their oppressive form of religion. Atheism can't offer it because all they rely on is science and have no hope of anything after this life. In our hurry to be PC and to appease those that hate us we have forgotten the very principals, the very hope, that we were originally founded on, principals that can be found in most of the worlds religions. Instead we have opted out for revisionists who try to tell us that the founders were not godly ,religious men, and that our Constitution was not founded on those basic moral principals. In it's own subtle way, trying to kill the hope of the future we once had. If we ignore G-D or pretend that he doesn't exist, then where does our hope come from? Where does the founding principals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness come from? The point is this, we need these holy days to remind us of the love and mercy of G-D. We need these holidays to remind us that our hope comes from him and not man and that in the midst of all the chaos, G-D is still there and He is still directing events in this world and that in the end His will, will prevail. Shalom.

How would Jesus Vote?

So here is a question for you that may sound surprising coming from me; what would Jesus do? Better yet, how would Jesus vote? I ask this question in all sincerity to my Christian brothers and sisters out there who are not only religiously minded but have an ear towards politics. I am also asking this question based on a trend that I have noticed from a lot of those leaders that belong to the Evangelical world from both sides of the aisle. This trend tending to be that because they are well known and popular amongst their congregations and audiences across the nation that this somehow allows for them to be the voice of G-D on many issues, including politics, and their belief that G-D seems to believe the same way that they do. Before I go on, so there is no confusion, I don't believe that Jesus was a god of any kind , a rabbi certainly, but not G-D. But I present these questions and comments because many of you do and I respect your beliefs even when I disagree. So would Jesus be a socialist or into social justice? Would he be a conservative wearing a suit and tie? What Issues would be important to him? Does anyone really know or does it really matter? I think it does matter, to a certain degree, because most of the time your opinions seems to be based on who you listen to. If you follow those on the right, the reason that we are in such trouble in this country is due to everything from secularization to the ACLU and all points in between. Obama is the anti Christ, gays and lesbians are dangerous to families. Every form of evil comes from those who dare to disagree with the idea that everything in the bible is entirely accurate or you question their interpretation of the scripture. If you follow those on the left, you are condemned for taking the bible literally, and the only way that you could possibly be following Jesus is if we have so called social justice and spread the wealth. The real evil is those who actually cling to their god, their guns and the bible. Oh yes , the GOP is the devil incarnate. So we have some very differing, opposing views of G-D, wrapped in politics, and all believe that they are right. So lets look at the subject at hand it could simplify this a whole lot. If Jesus was walking the earth today, what would his politics be? First we know that he was a casual dresser, didn't own any form of transportation and essentially had no place to live. He walked everywhere, hung out with those that were the dregs of society, made followers of fishermen and prostitutes. We have been told He healed many people, and he fed thousands with almost nothing and let us not forget the things that he preached as recorded by others years later. He never spoke of homosexuality, for or against, rather he told his followers to love G-D first and foremost and to love each other, that was what the kingdom was really all about. It almost sounds like he was a liberal democrat who was extremely into love of people and of G-D. The problem with that though is that he never forced anyone to take his help, we hear many stories of those that were healed but I have to wonder how many more said no. How about the story of the rich young ruler? He only told the young man what he should do, not that he had to do it. He paid his taxes even while speaking against the Romans and he wasn't afraid to make his opinions heard when he went into the temple to overturn the money tables with a whip. He also said that he had come to bring a sword and not peace. He didn't spend his time condemning the average person, rather he would tell them to go and sin no more, at the same time getting on the leadership of his nation for their pompous arrogance. Sounds like a conservative to me. So what does all this make him? A liberal? Conservative? A Democrat? A Republican? Who's opinion should you listen to and adhere to? I have an answer for you. How about none of the above. I am tired of people,especially religious leaders, assuming that some how they know what the mind and the will of G-D is when the Scriptures make it very clear that none of us can even begin to comprehend the mind of G-D. All your so called education is but a drop in the bucket of the things of G-D and to assume that you know better then the rest of us is nothing more then arrogance on your part. If you have an opinion, fine. It's your opinion and you are allowed, but don't claim to speak for G-d in the course of making that opinion public. Some of the most hateful and dangerous speeches and proclamations ever made throughout history have all come boxed up in the name of G-D, and millions have died as a result.

Perspective on Justice

“You shall appoint judges and officers in all your gates, which the Lord your God gives you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with just judgment." Deut. 16:18.

Many years ago ,on this blog, I commented on how many things that we see or believe are really a matter of perception. I had been looking at low hanging clouds over a place in Vermont where you see across the valley to Mt. Washington and there were a lot of clouds hanging low, with trailers, on them and it really looked beautiful. Yet had I been looking at them in Tornado country, such as Arkansas, I would have been in panic mode because they would have looked like funnel type clouds.
Perspective.

I didn't panic because I knew the truth of things. I knew the facts. I was in Vermont, where tornadoes are rare, though not unheard of, and it was the wrong time of the year for them.

Perspective and facts need to apply to the case in Florida of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. We don't have all the information, we have little more then a one sided view of what happened and yet people are so angry that some have put a bounty on the head of Zimmerman.

The only thing that is known 100% is that there was an altercation between Martin and Zimmerman and that in that altercation Martin was shot and killed. That's it. You might think that's enough to convict someone of murder, but it's not. You can't even claim that it was a hate crime because there isn't any hard evidence. All the facts, in this case, are simply not known.There is no proper perspective.

As a teenager I was convicted for a crime that I never committed on nothing more then hearsay and some pretty poor circumstantial evidence. No witnesses to said crime and the only real "proof" was the confession of the kid that actually did commit the crime and a sneaker print that was within a size or two of my own shoes. Not much to go on but I was convicted and humiliated none the less.

I also understand being hated because of race. I am of the half breed Hispanic variety and I have been hated at various times and places and threatened simply based on my skin color or my name. This has happened as recently as 3 weeks ago. I do understand.

So as you can see I am sympathetic to both families involved, but again I submit to you, lets have all the facts and a proper perspective before anyone else gets hurt.

God calls on us to have a fair and impartial justice system “You shall appoint judges and officers in all your gates, which the Lord your God gives you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with just judgment." Deut. 16:18. In Joshua chapter 20 they established cities of refuge so that someone, who accidentally killed someone, could flee there for protection, until which time they could stand trial, see verses 6 and 9. Justice and proper perspective working together.

We don't know what happened. The accused, by the media , not the police, is in hiding and in fear of his life. The Black Panthers have put a price on his head. Jesse Jackson, who claims to be a Christian and should know better then to do this, along with Al Sharpton, are fueling the fire of hatred and prejudice, the very things that they would have marched against back in the 60's. And, lest we forget, there is a dead young man and a grieving family. This is not the way to handle things. Never has been.This is not justice or a proper perspective.

If after ALL the evidence is presented it is found that Zimmerman is guilty, then let justice take it's course because only then will we have the perspective that is needed to convict, but do not make the mistake of convicting a man of a crime,especially one as bad as this one, with out due process and without all the evidence being presented in a court of law.

Only once all the evidence is made clear, will you have the proper perspective and only then can justice can be served.

Shalom.