Being A Blessing in Difficult Times

Have you been worried lately about the state of our country? Are you storing rice and beans, or whatever, along with water. Not a bad idea, according to some prophesies that are floating around. "End times," we hear. Surely we're in the end of days and Jesus can't be far from bursting through the clouds. But what if He's not? What if we're not really "outta here" real soon?

This little blog is really about joy, but first I have to say a few things. Jesus said, "Occupy till I come." That means be involved in the things of life. Other generations have expected it was the end days, but we're still here. It sure must have looked like Hitler was the anti-Christ and it was all over, but he's gone and we're still here.

So how shall we deal with all that is happening? For one thing, I get concerned for our young people (and maybe some older people)who are being told perhaps they have no future here on earth to be concerned about because we're in the "end times." So what is there to aspire toward or even care about? What vision and tools will they have to live out productive and happy lives if they aren't equipped now to live such lives? What kind of parents will they be to inspire their own children? If you don't aspire, you can't inspire. Without aspiration you don't learn perseverance, and it's perseverance which results in proven character and that leads to hope. How depressed and "dropped out" might some be without hope for a bright future?

But then there are also those of us who are excited about Jesus coming back, whenever it happens. There are those of us who share His heart for the hearts of people who find themselves lost without Him. Those who are motivated to tell others there's a great life to be lived in God. Now that alone will straighten out a good many things in our lives. If the Holy Spirit can really get hold of us, and we really surrender our lives to His Lordship, then He can change us and mold us into the image of Jesus, which means we can be people who change the world. We will be people of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control. Lord knows we could use more of that in the world today, can't we?

So how do we work this out in our day-to-day living? I am privileged to have a large meadow on our “village” property. Lizzie (my doggie) and I walk there in the morning, often still wet with dew. Amid the waving grasses and occasional wild flowers feed flocks of herons and Egrets. The pond a few doors down from my house is the habitat of a number of Moskovie and Mallard ducks, including our second brood of new baby duckies this summer, each time eleven of them. I love the smells and the sounds of summer. I can pretend the world is safe and normal and at peace for a few minutes each morning. And I can be grateful to God for eyes to see all this, and ears to hear and legs to walk, and for Lizzie to share it with me. I wholly recommend you get out in nature. It gives you a much wider perspective on what life is comprised of outside of yourself. Get near some animals. Go to the zoo, which is where I took this photo of the flamingos. (You can tell I like the Zoo. See my Zoo article below.)

With so much possibly looming on the horizon in our nation and in the world, besides praying, I’ve set myself to saying, “Today is good. Today is safe. Right now I can give my thanksgiving to God for all I have taken for granted till quite recently, and be as much of a blessing to others as I can, today." I became aware recently that I had been dialing down my expectations of good, trying to prepare myself for living with less. But then I realized the less was resulting in less joy when the less was only about 'stuff.' But my joy is eternal. It comes from the Lord. Nothing changed in the Kingdom of God. I can live from there even if I live in this world. We're to be 'in' the world, but not 'of' it, if we belong to Jesus, right?

So I asked God, "How shall I deal with what's going on today, Lord?" The answer: "Be as much of a blessing as you can wherever you are." Not the answer I expected. So I started "being a blessing." By that I mean I greeted people warmly like I liked them and found I did, even new people. And they responded in kind and we got all joyful and "So very glad to meet you" together. I started really listening to people and looking them in the eyes like I care, which I was starting to more than before. It didn't take much. Just letting Jesus love people through me then made me feel loved. When I found myself in a conversation about how dire things could get, I gently reminded them that God is still as good as ever and His promises haven't changed because our economy has. The Kingdom of God does not suffer lack.

I've started asking the Lord to teach us how to have our needs met by Him the same way Israel did for 40 years on the desert when food (manna) was delivered daily by angels and not even a sandal wore out. Perhaps if our health care system breaks down we might just have to rely on God for healing the way the first century believers in Jesus did. Maybe then we'd find He would give us the same power He gave them, if we put our trust in Him as they did, and not in a whole lot of other options.

Being a believer in Jesus is about believing Him, right? I’m finding that’s bringing me more joy than any kind of worrying could possibly. And as for being a blessing, well, you do reap what you sow. If you're depressed or are feeling unloved, go out and love somebody else. Be a blessing today. Spread around some of God's goodness and love. He is, after all, love! Not sure what tomorrow will bring, but today there are new baby duckies -- a sign that life will go on -- bobbing around in the edges of the pond where it's still shallow. Why not step out in your own shallow waters at first and bring some new life to someone who could just use a hug or a smile from Jesus today. You might find the secret to the Lord's joy: Even with what He was facing in His own "end times" here on earth, He was a blessing to everyone who would receive His blessings.

If we are the Lord's, then we will feel His joy as we let Him love people through us. And despite what we might go through, we are headed for the eternal joy of heaven just as He was. It was for the joy set before Him that He endured the cross. That same joy is also promised to us, if we have made Jesus Lord of our lives, both eternal joy and the today kind of joy.

Have a "blessed" day.

There's Glory in the Zoo

I spent the day at the Zoo today with some friends. Forty-something of them, actually. It was a congregation outing. What fun. The Zoo in Jacksonville is arranged so that if one has enough of an imagination, one can pretend you are in Africa. You know, the peaceful yet exciting African trip, like you imagined as a kid when Africa seemed so romantic in those movies of years ago (make that decades.) Jax being semi-tropical and it being close to summer, it rained off and on today. Poured! We ran for and huddled under a grove of trees with a thatched roof covering one might hope to find in a jungle.(We're pretending, remember.) The animals lumbered or hopped or scampered or flew for cover in the downpour as we did. Fifteen minutes later the sun came out and so did we all. We looked at the animals. They mostly ignored us. But we were fascinated.

The apes look just a bit too human for comfort and its easy to see why some could consider that humans came from apes. I held hands with a chimp once. It felt so human it was a bit disconcerting. Seeing them brought to mind a story of my daughter Ellen when in 3rd grade was being taught something about evolution. She indignantly stood up in class, as the teacher later told me, shook her little curly blond head and with her arms folded to make the point announced, "God made man in His own image and God is not an ape!"

Some animals are just strange looking and do make you want to ask, "Lord, whatever were you thinking when you made this one?" One extremely loud and gutsy bird that stood about two feet high with a voice that far exceeded his size ran back and forth with one of our boys like he was playing tag with him. Was it fun for him too? The Giraffes were clearly a close-knit family. One of the giraffes, who is evidently named Naomi (Does she know that?)would eat leaves from your hand. Flamingos are that color pink even when they're not plastic. Lemurs seem to have more fun than anybody. The big cats are majestic. See a male lion and you know why he's king. And you know why Yeshua (Jesus) is the Lion of Judah! We got closer to the Leopards though. Magnificent animals. Regal. Assured. Confident. You don't want to mess with a Leopard. Elephants are....well, big. And baby elephants do hold their mommy's tail with their little trunks, like we hold hands. Little, of course, is a relative term. We are talking elephants here. The snakes? Creepy. Big Anacondias do bring up a picture of one chatting with Eve, while plotting the destruction of the world. You can see where this big dude might be convincing.

We saw the largest rodent in the world. If no one had told me this was a rodent, I might have even though he was cute. Sort of. But that rodent title ruined it. Yuck. He was in the recreated river scene with the ant eater. A vacuum cleaner with fur. It was interesting to see what kinds of animals live side-by-side with other species and pretty much ignore each other, or at least aren't antagonistic. Some are even symbiotic, like birds that ride on hippos or water buffaloes - what they eat keeps the buffaloes clean. Works for them. Then there were the fleet-of-feet (not that they had anywhere to go) elks and ibexes (ibexi?) that appear to be growing shofars on their heads. Some might call them antlers.

All in all, being with the animals revealed anew how vastly creative our God is. I became aware of how He's made more kinds and variations of animals and birds than I was aware of. Some are rarely seen by man unless in captivity. He creates them just for His own pleasure, it would seem. All this takes you outside of yourself. It's so easy to get pigeon-holed (no pun intended, though we might note that there were no pigeons in this zoo, unlike, say, the Philadephia Zoo which is replete with them) in your own mind and emotions so that all that we're aware of is is our own little lives and what concerns us. We city-folk who are largely detached from the world of raw nature and animals and birds of all kinds, except for our domesticated and civilized pets, can easily loose sight of how small our lives are in the vast scheme of God's enormous plan in the earth.

Being in that environment, even imagining we were in the rain forests of Africa or South America and being with what is indigenous there, gave me the sense that this world is so much bigger and more beautiful and more unique than I have been imagining in my tunnel vision and self-focus. God is so big and so in control of all these extraordinary manifestations of His power and beauty. The sounds of the voices calling for their same-species mates are distinguished to the ears of the summoned lovers from all the other voices in the forest. They come together and soon babies of the uniquely beautiful perfect replica of their parents is born. Each new little one looks and acts just like it's parents, without deviation in the patterns and colors of feather or fur, and its instinctual nature.

We saw a big tree full of storks with a plethora of nests. My friend Bonnie said it looked like a high rise apartment building for storks. A loud humming noise came from the tree and then we realized we were hearing baby storks in the nests. Lord knows how many of them. A whole society of storks was happening right there in front of us. Now, I'm pretty sure that God isn't as concerned about their society as He is about ours, at least I think so. You know, that "Aren't you worth more than a sparrow" comment made by the Lord, comes to mind (Matthew 10:31). But God is not just concerned with our problems, with keeping us protected and with helping us, by any means. He's running the universe. And if He can do all that so perfectly and beautifully, then surely He can take care of me. Surely if He can take care of the world, He can even take care of our country.

Taking a trip to the Zoo was a heart and mind expanding journey. God was everywhere. Not that He's not anyway, but sometimes something lifts your chin to Him and your eyes open and you feel yourself smile. That's what happens when your heart awakens again or to something new of God and His goodness. There's such an order to His creation. It's all so beautiful. If that's how beautiful the creation is, how beautiful must the Creator be?!

Along with the animal life the plants and vegetation is beyond beautiful and exceedingly well landscaped to look authentically African or Australian, etc. On our way out, we noticed some richly darkish purple flowers blooming happily next to what can only be called bright chartreuse leaves. You would never paint your living room those colors, but when God does it -- magnifico!

Our trip to the Zoo today brought a deeper rest to my soul. God is so much bigger to me tonight than He was this morning. I am so much more aware of how attentive to detail He is in His commitment to bring beauty and symmetry and order to the world. He is so faithful to keep it all going.And all this continues beside or despite the goings on in mankind and our societal ills. We are part of a vast scenario of beauty, for His pleasure. In Him we ALL live and move, whether we fly, crawl or lumber, hop, swim or slither. In Him we all exist. His diversity awakes within me an awareness that there is so much more available in God to me, and to whomever will look to Him for it, than I have partaken of, or trusted Him for. His evident Lordship over it all in its order and beauty brings me to a new awareness of His glory and His beauty all around us. It's not just in the zoo.

About Challenging God

I met a delightful man recently, a doctor, who was raised in a church denomination not known for its power or sense of the presence of the Lord, at least not since the 1500’s. He goes to church occasionally but boasted that “I don’t make a habit of it.” The only thing he makes a habit of, he said, was “being good.” He had enough church-going in him from his childhood that his idea of being a Christian was that of “being good.”

As our conversation continued I spoke about knowing God while he talked of church and how his family is active in church. “But what about you?” I asked. He then voiced some very real questions about God as to why suffering exists in the world. He is a doctor, after all, in order to help alleviate suffering. “When I meet God,” he stated emphatically, seemingly assured that he would and that he’d have opportunity to speak his mind to Him about why He allows suffering, “I’ve got some things I intend to say to Him,” he said meaning he’d like to tell God that he doesn’t like the way He is running the world.

Many years ago a friend of mine was involved in what she identified as a “philosophically based prison program.” The premise was based upon an eclectic blend of “isms,” of different Eastern philosophies and ideas of god (small ‘g’) which provided prisoners with a new sense of self-identity and of reality that would sensitize them to goodness. Again, the concept of “being good” was presumably the solution, in this case to the criminal mind. She was, with genuine altruistic intent, going into prisons to teach and impart this philosophy.

I had recently become a Believer in Jesus having had my own sense of reality greatly altered when I “met God.” He was nothing of what I thought He might be. As a Jew for one thing, I never expected Jesus to be God! But I also knew I met with a power for “goodness” that was emphatically beyond any ability of my own to “be good.” Upon sharing my new-found faith with this friend, she told me, “If I ever meet Jesus Christ there are some serious things I have to say to Him, eye to eye, on equal footing.” I knew she meant the suffering the Jews have endured in His name, but also of why evil exists at all. But I also knew there would be no “eye to eye” encounter where she would “mouth off” to Him, nor opportunity to let Him know how she felt about Him. She assumed He was no more than a person, albeit one of great influence, than she or anyone else. Where or how she would meet Him wasn’t addressed.

I took her to see the movie called “The Hiding Place” which is the story of Corrie Ten Boom’s life in which she and her sister Betsy are arrested by the Nazis for hiding Jews during WWII. They are sent to a concentration camp where Betsy becomes very ill and eventually dies. Before she dies she affirms her love for Jesus and with His love she forgives the Nazis who have tortured her and so many around her, and for all the evil they were perpetrating, and encourages Corrie to forgive them as well. She forgave them! My friend, who is also Jewish, could not get past that. Knowing that six million of our Jewish people and millions of others suffered unimaginably horrible tortures, and died equally cruel deaths at the hands of the Nazis, how could she possibly forgive them? This was where her “philosophically based program” fell apart for it provided no escape from the impotent rage against such injustice.

We returned to my home after the movie as she and her daughter would be spending the night at our house. I took the babysitter home and then found my friend sitting on the back fence of my house overlooking a pasture. It was quiet, peaceful and safe out there in the early summer evening, quite unlike what we had just witnessed in the movie. In the moonlight I could see she was pensive and deeply moved. All she could say to me was, “I know that in order for Betsy to forgive the Nazis there had to be a power beyond anything I have ever known.” I had shared with her before this evening of the forgiveness and pardon Yeshua offers to us through allowing Himself to be sentenced to death in order to satisfy the penalty for our sins. Those are prison terms she would understand. Until this night it was all meaningless to her because her idea of herself was that of “being good.” What was there to forgive? The next morning she told me she had turned her life over to the Lord. That was thirty-four years ago. She has remained a faithful follower of Yeshua since.

Several assumptions present themselves through these two scenarios of wanting to meet the Lord “face to face” to challenge Him. The first is that God “is,” that He exists, and then that He is approachable, and that we will be able to have an audience with Him. It also assumes that we would have the freedom to speak our minds and to demand of Him an explanation, a defense, if you will, for why He allows evil to exist, or is possibly even the cause of it, considering how much suffering is done in His name, though let it be known that such suffering is far from anything He would do or ever sanction. It is a tragedy that the only picture of Yeshua that some people have is of how others have misrepresented Him.

To read the rest of this article go to Articles at www.sidroth.org.

Loving Like God Loves

Yeshua seemed to think we will love each other and be one in Him. I’ve found that it doesn’t take much getting to know each other before we who love the Lord love each other as brothers and sisters if the situation allows for at least some interaction with each other. We were just discussing this in my Kosher Bible class, about how we can just walk by a perfect stranger and your eyes connect for just a moment and you recognize each other as fellow Believers. I love when that happens.

I usually experience a genuine love for them at that moment. Like if someone hurt them right then I’d have to jump in and say, “Hey, that’s my sister you’re messing with. Back off, in the name of Jesus!!!” Okay, a little dramatic, but there’s this sense of belonging when I know they’re Believers too. There’s a connectedness.

It’s not really our love though, especially if we don’t even know the person or know them well. We’re really feeling Yeshua’s (Jesus') love for that person; He puts His love in our hearts. How supernatural is that? If you haven’t had that experience, ask the Lord to open up your life to that kind of sensitivity to other believers. Then look for it. It'll happen.

My then 88 year old mom (she’s 90 now) told the Exterminator, “You’re a believer in Jesus, aren’t you? I can see it in your eyes.” He was. A little time of fellowship between Mom and the bug guy!

For the rest of this article, go to: www.sidroth.org and click on "Learn More: Articles." Scroll down to "Loving Like God Loves." You will find others of my articles there as well.

You Can't Taste the Chicken Soup Online

How long has your family been celebrating Passover, I was asked by a new Christian friend who had just learned that my family observes Passover. To her the Exodus was only a Bible story. "Oh, about 3500 years," I responded.

If there's one thing Jewish people do, no matter how religious or non-religious we are, mostly everyone participates in a Seder. I'm pretty sure that's a work of the Holy Spirit. After all, that's a long time, 3500 years, to be telling the same story every year. God has to be in on that. We're just not all that faithful on our own.

The first year my Dad became a believer in Yeshua he conducted the Passover Seder almost entirely in Yiddish (which only some of us actually understood). He did so because Yiddish was his first language as he grew up in his Rabbi grandfather's shull (synagogue) and his heart was so tender toward Yeshua, he wanted to tie his Jewish background together with his Jewish Messiah. We were all so familiar with the story, having each heard it all our lives, that despite the language, we knew what was being said, and were touched by Dad's love for the Lord and his gratefulness to God for rescuing our people time and time again.

This year there were 14 of us at our Seder table in Jacksonville, 12 family members and two guests, one from Germany. But my son was in New York and unable to be with us. That is, not "in person." However, my daughter Jenny had a brainstorm. We "Skyped" him in and there he was on her laptop computer, big as life. Well, almost. She carried the laptop around so we could each greet him. The family kibbitzing went on between the kids and their uncle as usual, only online this time. Then we set him near the candles as my other daughter Ellen lit them and said the blessing. When it was time for the first cup of wine, he said the B'rachah (blessing) in Hebrew and English. We proceeded through the Seder with him at the head of the table -- literally because we could only see his head on the screen.

So not even distance kept us from celebrating our Passover Seder together this year. I wonder if we're the first to hold a family cyber-Seder. The only thing missing, for me was that I couldn't hug him and for him, that no matter how interactive we were able to be, he couldn't taste the chicken soup online.

Why Easter Isn't Kosher

Do you know the origin of Easter eggs and those cute little Easter bunnies? Did you know they have been around since Nimrod's wife, after his death, defined herself as a fertility goddess, using eggs and rabbits as symbols for fertility rites connected with worshipping her. Her name was Ishtar. In semetic languages, as in Hebrew, an "s" and an "sh" is the same letter. An "i" is pronounced as "ee" which makes Ishtar into Eester or Easter.

Yeshua's death and resurrection took place during Passover following His last Passover Seder on earth during which time He broke broke the bread and took the cup of wine and gave them to His disciples as symbols of His blood and body which He so courageously and so willingly gave for His "friends." He was then examined by the High Priest while the lambs were being examined by the priests to be sure they were perfect and without blemish or spot. Though no cause was legitimately found, He was crucified just when the lambs were sacrificed as the passover offerings. He was the greater fulfillment of all that Passover represents. Yeshua, John said,was the (Passover) Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world. Passover was Israel's release from slavery to men and Yeshua brought us release from slavery to sin. Passover and the Resurrection are prophetically tied to one another.

But 300 years after His death, Constantine married the worship of Ishtar to Christianity and so we have a confusing mix of the resurrection of Jesus with colored eggs and bunnies -- and basically no mention or observance of Passover which God commanded be an everlasting celebration for Israel and for all who worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which would include every Christian, for Christians worship the same God that Yeshua worshipped.

I presented this information at one of my recent Shabbat services. One woman to whom this was all new exclaimed, "What am I now to do with the $100 worth of Easter baskets I have ready to give to friends and family?" Apparently she has done this for years. I had copies available at the meeting of an extensive article on the subject that I had written for the Messianic Vision website previously, so she took the article, made copies of it and stuck one in each basket, explaining why this was the last year she would be giving out Easter baskets. She has opted along with many others these days, to celebrate the Resurrection of Yeshua on Passover, when it took place and to forsake the pagan stuff.

If you would like to see more of why Easter isn't kosher, go to Articles at www.sidroth.org . Scroll down to the bottom of the articles and in the search box type: What's Wrong With Easter and the article will come up. Though this article was written in 2008, you'll find some of the 3,500 year old information may astonish you.

You Never Know Who You'll Meet At a Turkish Festival

Some friends and I attended a Turkish Festival. Lots of wonderful Turkish food, music and dancing. Hundreds of people, most looking Turkish in some way. I felt at home. Why? Because Middle Eastern food and music tends to be similar regardless of the country it comes from. My pita bread was stuffed with veggies and meatballs resembling an Israeli falafel. And the dancing? Well whatever they call it, it looks pretty much like an Israeli hora to me and I was able to join like I was one of them. I felt like I was on vacation with some Sephardic friends in Israel.

Of the hundreds of people there, a man who happened to be standing next to me asked, "So, did you see everything?" I replied we had seen everything, ate everything and even danced some. He seemed pleased, then introduced me to his wife with whom he spoke Turkish. "I'm an American who became Turkish," he said. "And she's Turkish who became an American." I thought I should answer in kind so I said, "And I'm an American who's Jewish, and enjoying all this Turkish stuff." He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, as he put out his hand to take mine, "Me too. I'm David Silverman." I shook his hand and told him my name. We were immediately mishpuchah (family). My (non-Jewish) friends were amazed that out of all the people there, the one who talks to me is Jewish. I wasn't. "Welcome to my life," I said. It happens. Often.

In an art exhibit of mosaics and photos of Turkey, my Greek friend Barbara mentioned that her mother came from Samos, just off the coast of Turkey. One of the Turks handing out brochures at the exhibit overheard and said. "I come from Cos, close enough to swim to Samos." I asked him what he was doing in Jacksonville, so he told me how he'd fallen in love with a girl when he came here to study who was decidedly not going back to Turkey with him. So he stayed here. I could see he was wondering if I too were Turkish or Greek, so I told him I'm Jewish, interested to see what his reaction would be. He immediately got really excited.

"Oh, I must tell you," he said in his melodious Turkish accent. "Eighteen of us went to a Seder this week. We went to a synagogue and we did the whole lamb thing," he said. "We put the horseradish on the matzoh to remember the tears of slavery..." He went on to tell me what had taken place and did a great job of conveying the whole Passover Seder in two minutes. He got it. The Passover story had evidently become very real to him.

He asked me if I knew the rabbi who had conducted the seder.He seemed sure I should know him. After all, we're both Jewish. I didn't. I explained that I am Jewish but I believe in Jesus so I attend another kind of congregation. He looked puzzled. "I don't know about those things," he said. So I continued, with the Turkish music playing enthusiastically in the background, "Jesus, you know who He is?" He shook his head, "Oh yes." "He is the Son of God," I said, "and He was Jewish." Again he nodded affirmatively. "But most Jewish people have not believed in Him," I said intending to go on to say how this is changing in fulfillment of prophesy. This time he shook his head back and forth and said, "He's Jewish but the Jews don't believe in Him? That's crazy. Very confusing." I agreed.

I left it with saying that the God of the Passover cares about us all wants to bring everyone who looks to Him out of whatever kind of slavery we may find ourselves. "Yeah, yeah," he agreed. I left with a joyful sense of having been at the right place at the right time for seed planting and with a greater sense that God is still using the Jews and the Passover seder to show the world how good He is!