Berĕshith 4 :: This is the Great Adventure

I cannot even imagine what it must have been like to have The Almighty speak to you as He did to Abram. Without so much as a "Fear not!" to soften the shock: what did Abram think when YHVH called him to leave his home?

I have grown up thinking that he must have simply just packed up his camels and hiked off into the desert with his entourage. It may very well have happened that way, but the stories don't give us much to go on when we start to wonder what must have been going through his mind. Regardless of what he may have thought, it's pretty clear that Abram did not hesitate to sh'ma the voice calling him out of his father's household and off to (pardon the expression) "God knows where."

Any adventure always starts with a departure... and with us leaving something behind. We each have a different story, because we are all called to leave something behind when we heed our individual call to follow YHVH. Whatever that thing is will make our story a unique one. Can you identify with any of these things that we have been called to leave behind when we sh'ma the voice of YHVH calling?

• Self-destructive behavior 
• Critical spirit
• Attitude of entitlement or victimization
• Sense of self-importance
• Toxic relationship(s)
• Getting too comfortable with our comfort zone
• Pride in our own accomplishments 

I, for one, have had to re-start my adventure of listening for His voice and following where He leads more than once. Much like Abram's father Terah, I have discovered just how easy it is to lose my focus and get pulled off track and waste precious years in my own "Haran." Thankfully, YHVH is a God of second (and third... and fourth...) chances. Otherwise,  I certainly wouldn't be where I am today. 

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Vayera: Genesis 18:1 - 33

Haftarah: II Kings 4:1 - 37

B’rit Chadasha:  Galatians 4:1 - 5:6;  Hebrews 11:17 - 19

Berĕshith 3 :: The Father of All Who Listen

This week, we are re-reading that familiar story of the calling of Abram to leave Haran and to trust YHVH to lead him... and Abram listened. Not only did he listen, he obeyed. Ah... there's that calling to sh'ma.

It would also seem that apparently Abram's father Terah had at one point also been called to leave. He appears to have gotten distracted, somewhere along the way from leaving Ur and landing in Haran. Scripture does not elaborate, so there is no need for me to be presumptuous and come up with an excuse. Suffice it to say, Terah did not sh'ma.

(Teraḥ took his son Aḇram and his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Aḇram’s wife, and they went out with them from Ur-kasdim to go to the land of Kena‛an. And they came to Ḥaran and dwelt there. And the days of Teraḥ came to be two hundred and five years, and Teraḥ died in Ḥaran. - Genesis 11:31-32)

I'm not here today to go through the whole re-telling of the story. If you grew up going to Sunday school, you probably know the story by heart.  Besides, I have to assume that anyone reading my randomizing is also able to read the story for themselves.

Telling the story is not the point. I want to talk about what we all can sh'ma here. And I think this is it:

•    YHVH calls each one of us to trust Him enough to leave our comfort zones.

•    YHVH wants us to keep our eyes on Him, and not get distracted by the events and enticements that would divert our attention from following Him.

•    YHVH wants to use us to bring blessing to those He puts us in contact with.

If we listen closely, I think we can find a lot of similarities in our walk, and opportunities to bring the presence of God into our surroundings.

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Lech Lecha:  Genesis 12:1-20

Haftarah:  Isaiah 40:27 - 41:16

B’rit Chadasha:   Romans 3:19 - 5:11;  Galatians 3:6-29;  Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-12

Berĕshith 2 :: If It's Any Comfort

When Noah was named by his father Lamech, it was prophesied: This one will comfort us...

If you are thinking at all about what happened when Noah was on earth, you might be wondering how the death of the entire planet by drowning (with the exception of the 8 humans and their floating menagerie on the ark) was exactly a "comfort."

So here, I am again, getting ready to sh'ma, and see if I can figure out what it is that YHVH wants me to hear and obey this week.

First of all is the way YHVH saw Noah: righteous and faultless. That's a pretty tall order. And humanly, we have to wonder how it is that someone who would plant a vineyard and get plastered on the wine qualifies as faultless. Perhaps it is because YHVH is able to see past our momentary weaknesses to our obedience to what He has called us to. It's also helpful if we could understand that the Hebrew verb root of our word righteous is the word tzadak, which basically means "usable". Something that meets the designer's expectation for the project at hand. That's a lot different from the way I have always defined that word! In other words, our focus is usually on what we do to be considered righteous, when instead the focus is really more about our willingness for Him to use us and transform us to do the job He wants done! 

As William Bullock points out this week in his devotional on Noah, 

Biblically, we can say a tzaddik is ‘righteous’. But that does not mean we think he is totally sinless. It just means he is not so badly warped, corrupted, damaged, or out of spec that he is unusable in for the Kingdom of Heaven’s projects in His generation...  ‘righteousness’ comes solely from trusting and sh’ma-ing  the instructions of [YHVH.]
Righteousness, for Noah and for us, was found in and trusting in [YHVH's] goodness and grace, and thereby surrendering to the Creator’s will, sh’ma-ing His voice, and doing what He said – and nothing else.

The second thing I want to take away from this week's Torah portion is the understanding of the way YHVH saw the earth during Noah's time. As often as we complain these days about the hatred, the anger, the violence and the wickedness in the world, I think it must pale in comparison to how bad it must have been for the Creator to say, "Enough and No More!" when He looked on the corruption and total depravity of the earth. As it was described in this week's devotional:

The world was not just ‘messed up’ - it was in the throes of a death spiral... [YHVH's] intervention was an act of grace – a painful but necessary surgery that was the world’s – and mankind’s – only hope of survival...  but for the Flood, [life] would not have been a life worth living.

That's a powerful picture - and for all the people who cry about how mean YHVH was to have allowed everyone to die such a horrible death, to put it in His perspective helps us see it as "an act of tough love wrought by a merciful Creator who is...fully devoted to that [mankind's] survival and fulfillment."

My prayer after reading the Parshah this week is to be the kind of worshiper that God would find "usable" and consumed with listening to His voice.

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Torah Noach: Genesis 6:9 - 11:32

Haftarah: Isaiah 54:1 - 55:5

B’rit Chadasha: Matthew 24:1-44   I Peter 3:8-22  II Peter 1:3 - 2:22; 3:17-18

Berĕshith 1 :: Can You Hear Me?

The reading of the Torah cycle has recommenced. I find that I am getting something new every year as I read through it again. That is probably the reason why the writer of Acts reminded the new "Gentile" believers that they would learn how to live their lives set-apart to YHVH as they sat in on the teaching in the synagogues every week... 

For from ancient generations Mosheh has, in every city, those proclaiming him – being read in the congregations every Sabbath. (Acts 15:21)

As I read each week, I am reminded every time of how important it is to listen, to hear and obey. The most often spoken prayer has to be the Sh'ma, which is prayed several times daily by all devout Jews and many Messianic believers as well. We think we know what the word sh'ma means... but do we? If we did, I think there would a lot more people living set-apart lives in this world.

William Bullock, Jr. ("The Rabbis' Son") gives a very interesting word picture:

To sh’ma means much more than either to listen or to hear. It means to totally restructure one’s life based solely upon what one has heard, forsaking all other ways besides that way explicitly spoken by he who has spoken...An example of what it means to sh’ma is found in the way a mother of a newborn baby responds when her baby cries in the night. No matter how tired the mother is, or how inconvenient it may be, or who may tell her just to 'let the baby cry, it will be alright,' she is driven to respond, and does respond. Her reaction to the baby’s cry is a sh’ma response. She knows her baby’s voice. When she hears it, she drops everything and responds because of the depth of the relationship – the bond – she has with the baby. We are to sh’ma [YHVH's] voice the way the mother responds to her baby’s cry – drop everything, listen to no other counsel, and respond appropriately, in a manner consistent with the relationship.

As I read this week, my challenge to myself is to sh'ma... to 'listen' as I am reading... for His voice, and to respond appropriately.

This week's reading, starting with Creation, is a vivid reminder of the power of WORDS. With nothing more than Words, YHVH did then what He continues to do in our own lives - He uses words to transform emptiness into something more useful in His plan of redemption. He does it all in order, He has a design... So He has done with me and everyone who chooses to sh'ma His voice.

As Rabbi Bullock points out in his teaching this week, there is a Divine Principle in the process of Creation called havdalah – separation. YHVH separated the light from the dark, the sea from the dry land, the heavens from the earth... there is a pattern here worth noting. We, too, are created to be separate. He has called us to be set-apart from the common, from the profane. If we are going to sh'ma, we need to learn what that looks like... and we need to respond appropriately because of the depth of our relationship with Him.

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Torah B’reshit: Genesis 1:1 - 2:3

Haftarah: Isaiah 42:5 - 43:10

B’rit Chadasha: John 1:1-18 and Romans 5:12-21