Isaiah 56 and Sabbath

If you were to hear the word “Sabbath” what thoughts come to your mind?

In the Christian world there is some debate over the idea of the Sabbath, most main stream denominations do not follow the biblical sabbath of Saturday, as do the Jews and some Christian denominations such as the Seventh Day Adventist, because it is said by many that the “laws and ordinances were done away with at the cross” and so therefore the requirements of the law no longer apply. This, I believe, is wrong for several reasons, not just because I am not a Christian and wouldn't believe that in the first place but because its wrong for another more important reason, by not honoring the Sabbath, whether you believe it to be on Saturday or Sunday, you are missing out on a great excuse to stop and rest from the insanity of this world.

The word Sabbath simply means “to rest.” It means that we are to stop doing all the crazy things that we do all week and slow down. It means that this is a day that we should stop and worship God and focus on Him and the world that He has created and the blessing He has given us.

I have been a pastor. I have seen just how hectic “Sabbath” can be no matter what day you keep it and I have to wonder is that really what G-d meant for us when the Sabbath was instituted? I don't think so. Probably the sad part, for pastors anyhow, is that they can miss the sabbath rest because they are so busy they have to take another day off just to get the rest they should have had on the Sabbath.

I also tend to believe that by not keeping the Sabbath we are depriving ourselves from a great blessing.

I know that in Jewish communities that the Sabbath is a time of family and worship and that they literally stop doing anything that might resemble work of any kind, they even make sure that their food is cooked ahead of time so that during the Sabbath all they have to do is serve the food and eat. For them its a blessing and a day of rest.

For us we start with Kiddish(sp?) that's the traditional blessing of the bread and wine that the Jews do to welcome in the Sabbath on Friday night, we light candles and let them burn and we remember the blessings that G-d has given us during the past week. Saturday mornings my wife likes to make a special breakfast for us that is usually large and quite filling. We don't usually rush the process though and many times it will be close to noon before we even eat. After that we may go hike in the woods either outback or somewhere else and just make a relaxing day out of it. We try to leave everything else behind. Its usually the most peaceful day of the week.

I have a friend who is a Baptist minister who believes in the spirit of Sabbath. He doesn't believe that the day is important ,especially for Gentiles, but rather we keep the spirit of the law. In his case as soon as he is finished at the church he and his family go home and they literally do nothing but relax. They eat and play outside but nothing resembling any work is done, they literally rest.

G-d Himself promises us a blessing if we honor the Sabbath and yes that means us Gentiles. Isaiah 56 starting with verse 2-3, 6-8 “Happy is the man who does this,The man who holds fast to it: Who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and stays his hand from doing any evil. Let not the foreigner say,Who has attached himself to the Lord,The lord will keep me apart from His people;...” “As for the foreigners Who attach themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him,And to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants—all who keeps the Sabbath, and do not profane it,And holds fast to My covenant—I will bring them to My sacred mountain,And let them rejoice in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be welcome on My altar;For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”Thus declares the Lord God, who gathers the dispersed of Israel.

I don't know about you, but for me it fills me with great happiness and brings me comfort to know that my prayers and my sacrifices will be welcomed by G-d because I choose to keep and honor His sabbath and his commandments.

So given my choice between believing that it all been abolished, which I suppose for me is a moot point, or keeping His commandments,especially the Sabbath, I am going to go with keeping them.

Shalom

You Are Unique

Have you ever played the game I like to call “what if ?” You know the game where you wonder about how things might be different if you had chosen to do something different than you did? One of the episodes of “Dr. Who” has Donna, Dr. Who's companion, making a a right turn when she had originally made a left and not only did that effect her life but it effected the whole course of human events from that point on. The episode not only shows how one individual choice makes a difference, but how much one individual can truly effect the course of events and just how unique we all are.

I look back at my own family history and it amazes me just how many things had to come together for my children to even be here today.

My grandparents meeting was pure chance. My grandfather had had a boxing match the night before and was walking to work when he stopped at a farm house for a glass of water, the person who answered the door was my grandmother. What if my great grandmother had answered the door instead? What if he had gone to a different house?

My mother was in love with a man from her hometown, so much so that she wanted to run off with him, but my grandmother interfered, so instead my mother went to Boston where she met my father. What would have happened if she had run off with the other man? My father was here in the United States because Castro had taken over in Cuba, he too had someone in Cuba that he had loved, yet he had no real choice he had to leave. What would have happened if he had stayed in Cuba because Castro hadn't taken over? Luckily for me things turned out the way that they did and so here I am.

What about my own children and wife? When I was 19 I joined the Marine Corp. While I was at the hotel ,that they put us up in, a very pretty young lady spent a good chunk of the night trying to convince me to join her and many of the others in going to the Air Force. I didn't have to go to the Marines at that point because we hadn't been sworn in yet and we hadn't signed any papers so I could have switched. I didn't , but if I had, I would not have ever met my ex and as a result my oldest would not have been born. If I had re enlisted at that time I wouldn't have come home, after my divorce, and would not have run across an old roommate of mine who consequently introduced me to my wife and as a result, years later, the birth of my other two children.

Just using my own family history, what little I know of it, shows me just how unique all of us are. Thousands of years in the making and here we are; there is no one else in the world just like you.

I believe that the spirit in us belongs to God and is from God (how you view God is up to you) so I believe that even if things had been different we would have been born anyhow because really it's not the DNA that counts nor our ethnicity its the spirit of life that God gives that matters.

So next time someone is trying to put you down and tear you apart just remember how unique you are and that you are who you are because of the spirit in you. Whether you turn left or right will make all the difference in the world.

Time Of The Year

This morning while I was in the woods, watching for the elusive whitetail, I started thinking about this time of year and all that it means. Not only is it the first of December and snowing, but it's one of those rare times of the year when all my friends are celebrating one holiday or another. So what is it that we are celebrating? For Jews it's a celebration of Gods deliverance from the Greeks and the miracle of 8 days of oil burning when there shouldn't have been enough. For Christians it's the birth of Jesus and the hope of salvation and for my Pagan friends is a celebration of the renewal of the solar year. For Christians and Pagans many of their holiday traditions are similar because the Roman Catholic church copied many of the Pagans traditions as a way to try and convince them to convert. For all three celebrations there are lights and candles, gifts and food and music, but what is it that really links the three groups together? What is it that all of us are really celebrating?

I would humbly submit to you that all three celebrations are celebrating light,life and hope.

We are celebrating these holidays at literally the darkest time of the year. We light candles, light fires, and put lights on our trees and on our houses all in celebration of the holidays but also, in some ways anyhow, in defiance of the darkness and in the knowledge that the light is going to return.

We celebrate life in the deliverance of the Jews from the Greeks, the birth of a savior bringing salvation to the world and a renewal of the year as the sun starts its progress back into the sky.

We celebrate hope that the new day will bring a longer day, that God preforms miracles for His people, and in a baby the grace of God came to earth.

This is not about religion, this isn't even really about the holidays themselves. It's about what we all have in common. We spend to much time looking at our differences and trying to claim superiority over each other and yet in our hearts and in our celebrations we show that we are not so different after all.

Blessings to all.

Cylcles Of Life

Lately I have been able to spend a lot more time out in the woods or walking out on our road and I have started to notice some things that for reasons that are lost on me that I had never noticed before. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t see these things, it was just that I hadn’t really understood what it was that I was seeing, it wasn’t until I opened up my mind to see that I really started to get a grasp of what it was right before my eyes.

What I have seen, played out before my eyes for years, is that life renews itself after death. Go take a walk in the deep woods and take a serious hard look at a fallen tree or a stump and look at the life coming from it. You will find everything from moss and lichens to mushrooms and, in many cases, you will find new trees growing out of the stumps of the old. Life coming from what we would consider to be dead.

What does that say about us? We who have the breath of God living within us? Do we simply die and rot away in the ground and all that is a part of us disappears? Or is their more to it then we think?

Just about every religion that I have heard of share two things in common; one is that there is a big change coming in the not so far distant future, a subject for a separate post, and the second is that there is something beyond this life. If you’re a Christian you likely refer to it as heaven, if you’re a Jew it’s likely to have something to do with the messianic kingdom or if you’re a Hindu it’s likely to be some sort of re-incarnation, no matter what you wish to call it, it all boils down to that there is something after this life and nature shows it to us day after day.

There is a school of thought that I subscribe to, that suggests our lives repeat themselves until we have learned the lessons that we need to learn. I don’t mean that as soon as I die the clock rewinds for me and I go back to 19-- and start over, no, I believe that we are reborn as different people but we retain some of the knowledge, through our spirit, that we have taken from this life and as we interact with the same people, the same souls if you will, that we have interacted with in this life, we relearn and grow as in our previous lives and times. I don’t have any proof of this mind you; I can’t pull out some sort of theological study or scientific publication to prove this. I can only offer a couple of ideas as to why I think this way.

First is the above mentioned cycle of life that you can see in nature, the cycles of the moon, the seasons, life and death in nature. The second is not so concrete; dreams. I have had dreams that have been so real, so vivid and detailed that when I woke up I was disorientated as to what was actually real. I have seen through the eyes of people that I don’t remember and yet in the dreams I knew who I was and who all those around me were. One dream in particular I was in a battle during the American revolution and I was running with a group of other men and we were crossing a bridge, just as we got to the other side there was an explosion from a cannon ball and I was knocked down to the ground. The last thing I remember was faces looking down on me as everything fades to black. Then there was one dream that I had that I was getting ready for work as a nurse, I am assuming based on the clothes, and as I looked into the mirror the face looking back at me was my face but with long red hair and freckles but the real surprise for me came when I went to a battlefield and realized that this was the place that I had seen in my dream. I had never been there before so I had no way of knowing what it looked like and yet it was like I had just walked back into my dream. Are these proofs that I had been there before in a past life? No, but it’s very compelling.

My last reason has to do with people. Have you ever had the experience of meeting with someone for the very first time but feeling like you have known them your entire life? Or you’re certain that you know them from somewhere but as you compare notes you realize that it’s not likely? Or you meet certain people and you just immediately click? Why is that? I would humbly submit to you that it’s because of the spirit of God living in us points you to those that you have been with in past lives or times and so your spirit knows them even when your mind has forgotten.

Some will argue that this is not theologically sound, that’s OK, but let me ask you a question; if it’s the breath of life that comes from God that gives us life in the first place, where does that breath of life go? If God is eternal and He is spirit than I would submit to you that this breath of life or spirit of God goes back to Him and He does what He wants with it. Yes our bodies die but if nature is any example to us than I can see where our lives are renewed and we begin again.

Just my own humble opinion. Shalom

Fairy Tales And The Bible

Do you believe that the Bible is nothing but a bunch of fairy tales?  I ask this, not because I think that, but because a surprising number of people do. I will grant you that many modern scholars don’t take a lot of the bible seriously or literally and many see no historical value, though from an archeological point of view much of what is written has been proven to be accurate as they uncover artifacts, but still many biblical scholars as well as Christians and Jews alike don’t take much of what was written seriously, instead suggesting it is more of an allegory or poetry to tell a story of the people of Israel. One author that I had read some years ago even suggested that Moses made the whole thing up for the purpose of uniting the tribes in a common ancestor. Let’s take a look.

In the first 11 chapters of Genesis you have a few stories, creation, giants and the flood that, in all fairness, might seem to be a bit over the top in believability. If the bible was the only source for that information I could understand the skeptics   yet in just about all cultures, in ancient times, they have variations of the same stories. Whether or not they actually happened in the manner described by the Native peoples here in America or whether or not it happened as the epic of Gilgamesh suggests is not really the point, the fact that these stories exist at all is enough to convince me that something happened and it affected the collective consciences of the ancient peoples to the point where they all wrote their own versions of the events.

The prophet, Ezekiel, saw what he described as “a wheel inside a wheel” while having a vision from G-D. Some have suggested that what he is describing a UFO, while others, going back to the fairy tale theme would suggest that he was hallucinating. I would argue that his vision was quite real and he was doing the best he could to describe things that he didn’t begin to understand. Imagine someone coming to our time from 200 years ago and that person seeing an airplane. That person would have no real good description for what they saw so they would describe it as best they could based on what they know. It wouldn’t be that the plane wasn’t real; they would just be hard pressed to describe it.

After that the rest of the bible, and I am only referring to the Tanakh or OT, is the Story of Abraham and his decedents, the laws that G-D gave them and eventually how they screwed up. It’s also about redemption as G-D promises to redeem His people despite their collective failure and a promise of better days to come.

What truly makes this so believable to me is because the warts on the main characters are all included. Think about it; if you were going to write a bunch of fairy tales about your ancestors wouldn’t you want to write it in such a way as to make them look good? I would. I would want every one of my ancestors to be the smartest, brightest, best looking people on the planet without a single flaw, yet this is not what the writers of the bible did, they left the flaws. You have Abraham, being afraid and lying about his wife being his sister. You have Jacob who had two wives and two concubines and family in fighting. His sons, not to be out done, did everything from selling Joseph into slavery, to sleeping with prostitutes. It’s not a pretty picture. Once you get to the book of Judges, you have everyone doing their own thing and the various stories of the rulers who led them either into evil or back to G-D, but no matter how you look at it was ugly. Even the great heroes of the bible, Samson, Moses, David and Solomon, just to name a few, all screwed up badly and none of those facts are hidden as you read the stories. So for me I accept the stories, with all the warts and ugliness as being true. If that’s a fairy tale then it’s one I will gladly believe.

New Beginnings

Last night at sundown marked the beginning of the Jewish New Year, commonly known as Rosh Hashana or Feast of Trumpets, and it marks the first day of what is known as the days of awe.  The Days Of Awe is a  10 day period of time were people search their hearts and seek forgiveness from those that they have wronged as well as seeking forgiveness from G-D. It is a time when people reflect on their actions of the past year and seek to improve that which they can. It is literally a time for new beginnings. It is a time when people petition G-D for a good and sweet new year full of blessings because it is believed that during this time, leading up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, that G-D is literally deciding the fate of all peoples and nations.

It is the idea of a new beginning and forgiveness that I would like to address.

Over the past year I have offended some of you rather badly, it was not my intent to do so but I have none the less. In some cases I have tried to reconcile the differences only to make matters worse and in other cases I have sought out forgiveness from those I have offended only to be ignored or scorned. In these cases I have done what I can and I have to leave it in G-d’s hands. I can only pray that those people will find forgiveness in their hearts.

In at least one case I have offended an entire group of people, Muslims, based on their religion or, more precisely, some of the radicals, never once equating what I was doing, with what has been done to me and my family because we believe differently than Christianity. So to anyone who is a Muslim who is reading this, I am sorry for my ignorance and near hypocrisy in passing judgment on you based on radicals with in your religion. There are crazies in every religion and I have no right to judge all by the actions of a few.

So starting today, for me at least, I am going to seek a new beginning. I am going to try to be more open minded and try to sift more carefully, that which is being fed to me by the media, in all its forms, and focus more on the things of G-D. That is not to say that I won’t screw up from time to time but it is to say that it will not be my intent.

So to my friends and family who may be reading this, Have a happy new year and may it be filled with sweetness and joy.

Shana Tova

God Says Be Happy!

Today I am a happy man. There is just something about fall that brings it out of me. I can be in the worst of humor or not feeling well and yet bring me out into a beautiful cool fall day and everything else just kinds of fades away. The wind blowing through the trees is like healing balm to my soul, the cool air wraps around me like willowy gauze, and my spirit and soul breathe a sigh of contentment.

One of the definitions of being happy is “Feeling or showing pleasure or contentment." So I guess, for today, at least, I have found happiness because my soul in indeed content.

I think that probably all of us can think of things or times when we have felt happiness and contentment. The birth of a child, our wedding day, seeing old friends or perhaps, like me, nature, is what does it for you, but I am willing to bet that most people would not associate their house of worship with the idea of happiness, this is not true of everyone, of course because I have met some really enthusiastic people in my time in churches, but really how many of you would say that your Synagogue or church service makes you happy? I have heard some hair raising or tear jerking sermons from time to time but many times I have sat in houses of worship where it felt more like a funeral service than a celebration of G-D, though in all fairness I have also been in places that their services keep you rocking and praising G-D for hours afterwards, and that is really the point G-D actually commands that we are happy when worshiping Him.

Deuteronomy 16 says it three times. Verse 11 “You shall rejoice before the Lord your God with your son and daughter, your male and female slave, the Levite in your communities, and the stranger, the fatherless and the widow in your midst, at the place where the Lord your G-D will choose to establish His name. Verse 14 adds “You shall rejoice in your festival “and at the end of verse 15 “you shall have nothing but joy.”

Perhaps the reason that there are so many people, who don’t believe in any kind of G-D, is because we are not following His command to be happy when we are celebrating or worshiping Him. Too many religious institutions are filled with pomp and circumstance and pageantry, but they also seem to be lacking any kind of joy. Why should an atheist believe that there is a god when those of us who claim to worship Him, or Her ,depending on your point of view, are unhappy miserable people? Why should they believe when we fight each other over differences in religious points of view or form? We need to be happy ourselves, accept others differences, no matter their faith, and then we can project that happiness on to others who don’t believe. If they never come to a place where they believe in G-D, they might at least get to see G-D through us, and that alone might make a difference.

Shalom