Elul 27 :: Who is Sitting on the Throne?

Who is God, except יהוה  

And who is a Rock, except our God?  - Psalm 18:31

It seems that is the question we all need to ask ourselves. Is it possible that YHVH is really not 'God' in our lives, after all? It was a sobering thought, reading today's Elul devotional from The Rabbi's Son. Several things were suggested as possible gods in our lives, taking the rightful place of YHVH. I wonder if the list will make you as uncomfortable as it did me?

1. Self - including self-will, self-absorption, and self-importance.
   (It is no surprise that this is #1 on the list.)
2. Appetite - Can I just stop right here and say, "Ouch."
   And we're not just talking ice cream and chocolate bon-bons. Appetite also disguises itself as lust, pride, greed, jealousy.
3. Fear - fear of criticism, other's opinions, all of which result in taking the least path of resistance or risk, and thereby having the least impact or influence.
4. Creed - Yes, you heard that right. There's no typo there. We all have a desire for righteousness and order, but this little "g" god masquerades as moralism, legalism, or a righteous cause. 
   The Rabbi's Son describes this as: "thinking and trying to make everybody else believe you are right." 
   (Busted.)
5. Thrill - disguised as distractions, entertainment, addiction - instead of using our natural curiosity to enrich our relationship with YHVH.
   It is so tempting to point the finger at everyone else... until I analyze why I am playing that computer Solitaire game for the 30th time, or watching YouTube videos all evening (or fill in the blank for your own distractions or addictions.) 
6. Offense - this can be due to a real wrong done to you, or it can be a result of jealousy, hatred or prejudice. It leads to a desire to see someone else hurt as payback for the hurt they inflicted.
7. Shame - Shame manipulates our conscience and tells us our worth is based on some bad thing we did or wrong choice we made.
8. Mammon - This god can affect rich or poor, because at its root is envy. Wanting something that YHVH has given to someone else, for His own good purposes.

We can't dethrone these little "g" gods from our hearts if we are not going to be honest and pretend they aren't sitting on the throne that is intended for Someone else.

Let's stop and remember Who it was that redeemed us in the first place and brought us out of our own "Egypt", whatever our bondage looked like.

Elul 26 :: Say the Word

It just seems that I cannot read or hear anything about the power of words without the song The Word from the 1965 Beatles album Rubber Soul sticking in my brain. Sadly, it has nothing whatsoever to do with anything, it just gets stuck there, like an earworm – likely a result of my having played it so many times when I was (much) younger.

Say the word I'm thinking of
Have you heard the word is love?
It's so fine, it's sunshine
It's the word, love

In the beginning I misunderstood
But now I've got it, the word is good

Like I said, it's absurd. But it does illustrate my point about the power that words have on our mind. It is the same whether words are positive or negative, and I am sure all of us have heard plenty of negative words spoken over us in our lifetimes.

Indeed, the brother of Jesus/Yeshua, apostle James has this to say about the power of our words:

For we all stumble in many matters. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man… the tongue is a little member, yet boasts greatly… no man is able to tame the tongue. It is unruly, evil, filled with deadly poison. With it we bless our Elohim and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of Elohim. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brothers, this should not be so. – James 3:2-10 (The Scriptures 2009)

In considering today’s Elul devotional from The Rabbi’s Son, entitled Words That Carry the Weight of His Glory, the theme centers around the practice of using "ordinary, uninspired words – words of opinion, theory, gossip, vanity, political debate and philosophy and... cliché religion" versus using the words given to us by YHVH, which have the power to change hearts or alter the course of history, as with the words Moses spoke to Pharaoh.

Imagine: YHVH is ready, willing, and more than able to download His words, that carry the weight of His glory, into the hearts and mouths mouths "of absolutely anyone who will surrender to His calling, go where He tells them to go, and say what He tells them to say."

As one of my old pastors used to say, "Yes, but how?" Well, I would offer that it takes surrender, it takes prayer, and it takes practice. As a recovering sarcastic, I would add - it takes keeping your mouth shut until you have take a few seconds to consider what your words sound like to the person on the receiving end. Are they true? Are they uplifting? Are they edifying?

Elul 25 :: Not So 20-20

Recently, my husband had cataract surgery in his left eye. At the same time, a stint was inserted to help relieve pressure from recently diagnosed glaucoma. That he would be having these issues was hardly a surprise to us, as this is the same eye that suffered major trauma over 30 years ago when a 16d nail ricocheted off a stud and implanted into his eye. It was a miracle that he did not lose his eye or his eyesight, but we were forewarned that he would likely develop cataracts later in life.

Later in life has arrived, and they didn't lie. Unfortunately, even with surgery, the eyesight will probably never be much better. The up side is, he still has one eye with no vision problems, so life goes on.

Thankfully, we do not have to depend on our physical eyes for spiritual insight and understanding... or to see ourselves and others as YHVH sees us. Even better news than that is the knowledge that YHVH's eyes are on us at all times.

Indeed, according to today's Elul devotional with The Rabbi's Son,
     His ear is tuned in to hear your every heartbeat... He knows your thoughts before you think them... He knows your life better than you do.
     You may have quit looking in His direction, but He has not responded in kind.

And, you know what specifically is nice about this? He see us, He knows us, and when we cry out to Him, he does not dredge up all of our faults and sordid details of our past. Instead, He looks at our potential and our promise, and He believes in us.

Today's challenge is to see ourselves and others as YHVH sees us - our sins are not an obstacle to His love, but easily remedied by our "repentance and returning." And, with that revelation:
     "quit being repulsed by and overreacting to other people’s sin, and instead lovingly help them deal first with the main problem -- their estrangement from [YHVH]."

Elul 24 :: Defining "Holy"

Thinking about the word "holy" and what it really means. You can consult the dictionary, you can look in the thesaurus, but what does it actually look like in real life? The question has been asked, how did a patch of dirt or a scrawny thorn bush in the desert go from being commonplace to holy? For that matter, can any old person, place or thing be holy? And if so, how?

If one were to do a word search in an online Bible app, all sorts of verses pop up calling all sorts of things "holy"... from mountains to hills; from offerings to praises; bread, meat, and oil... it's quite a long list. Checking Websters yields the definition: exalted or worthy of complete devotion as one perfect in goodness and righteousness. But that doesn't answer the question, how?

According to today's Elul devotion, 

Holiness is absolutely inseparable from His Manifest Presence. Everywhere His Manifest  Presence is, holiness is. Moreover, holiness is absolutely impossible without His Manifest Presence… That means if you are trying to make yourself holy by your own efforts… you can forget it.

The only thing that made Mt. Sinai “holy” was that it was “in the Zone of His presence.” From that, we can deduce that in order for us to be holy, we also need to be “In the Zone” so to speak. In other words, our wants and dreams and desires are taken out of the equation because we want only what He desires for our lives. We decrease and He increases. It’s nothing we can accomplish on our own – it involves nothing less than total surrender and cooperation with the One who is holy and can never be anything but holy.

It takes me back to my Southern Baptist childhood and one of the songs that was sung for altar call: I Surrender All. 

The story behind the song

Elul 23 :: It is Well... or is it?

One of my all-time favorite hymns was written by a lawyer in the depths of a personal tragedy. Many probably know the story, but many more do not. In 1873, Horatio Spafford wrote the now-famous words after losing all of his children first to illness, then to shipwreck:

When peace like a river attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll,

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well with my soul.

That peace in the midst of deep personal loss has comforted many people trusting in YHVH. My own friend lost both of his parents while he was in college when they were brutally murdered by Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive of 1968. In his book, On Call, he describes his anger, despair and finally peace as he came to the place of trusting YHVH in the midst of his sorrow.

Today's Elul devotion from The Rabbi's Son reminds us that: "It is...not for His benefit that He consents to step off His Throne and into our field to [visit] us. It is [we who] desperately need Him to do so. He knows what our condition is – but we do not." It is true that the demands and challenges of our day-to-day lives seem to conspire to dull our minds to the reality that we have cracks in our emotional and spiritual armor. As a result, we don't notice as we slip into defensiveness, pettiness, anger, disappointment - then scar tissue builds up in our hearts and souls. Sometimes, it even takes a tragedy to shake us out of our self-absorbed state of mind and remind us that we need His touch, His hand to show us where we have become cold and unresponsive.

That is the reason why I embarked on this journey of introspection, with the goal of leading up to a better awareness of His hand directing me. Then, maybe I can sing with all honesty the words:

No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life

Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.

But, Lord, ’tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,

The sky, not the grave, is our goal;

Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord!

Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul!

Thank you Christine Miller for your beautiful scripture art!

Elul 22 :: That was then. This is now.

Let me cut right to the chase and totally bypass any of my randomizing:

“Consider how many people you have hurt or wounded in your life. Consider how many times you have acted selfishly, or childishly, to someone else’s hurt. Consider how many times your words have been full of cutting, biting sarcasm and accusation. Are you really so much more righteous than the persons who wounded and offended you? Does it really matter what happened in the past and who or what caused your wounds and scars – or is it better to focus upon the future and your destiny?”

I know that I, for one, spend way too much energy focusing on what happened in the past and how other people wounded or offended me. Me, me, me. 

Someone needs to go back and tell my 12-Year-Old Self, “Buck up, Buttercup! Life is not all about you!”

I hope you can hear that I’m not saying that YHVH doesn’t love us and care about us - each one - individually. You did not hear me say that. I’m not altogether heartless, but I do know what it is like to obsess over a wrong done to me to the point of feeling that I could not possibly forgive.

The point I am trying to make is, nothing that we remember or imagine we have suffered at the hands of any person can compare at all to what Jesus/Yeshua Himself endured at Calvary for our sins. I have to wonder if the wounds that we have experienced from

the mouths and hands of others are just a sly way for the enemy to get us to take our focus off of our own sins and how those sins have been dealt with, once and for all.

Maybe?

Unforgiveness… or “Holding a grudge is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die” is a quote that has been variously attributed to Buddha, St. Augustine, and Nelson Mandela. (It doesn’t matter who actually said it if it’s true, now does it?) Honestly, I think the bottom line is this:

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you." - Colossians 3:13

In an epiphany I had as I was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes - pondering the concept of teshuvah (the Hebrew word that we translate as "repent") which means turning and returning... In turning from our wrong choices, we also need to make sure we are returning to the life God has called us to, as His set apart people. It involves taking a look at how Jesus lived His life and taught His followers to live. 

For years I had wrestled with one particularly egregious wrong done to me personally that I just could not bring myself to forgive. And that is when it came to me, or as Smee says in the movie Hook, “I had an apostrophe - lightning has just hit my brain.” I won’t say I heard God speak audibly, but I do believe it was the inner voice of the Holy Spirit reminding me about the clear instruction of Colossians 3:13: “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

I didn’t have to say what happened was okay. I just had to say “I forgive.” But it was what came next that really surprised me. 

Freedom. 

In the days that followed, I was able to share my story with more people in two weeks than I had done in the previous 60 years. It was as though I had been released from a weight I had been carrying - much like the analogy In John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim's Progress, Christian's "backpack" is a crushing load weighing him down and making him struggle until he is finally freed from his burden when he views the cross of Jesus. 

Jesus didn’t just talk about forgiveness—He embodied it. Even from the cross:

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34

We are called to forgive, too. Jesus is clear: forgiven people are forgiving people.

“Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Colossians 3:13

 “If you do not forgive others… your Father will not forgive your sins.” Matthew 6:15

Forgiveness isn’t about pretending you weren’t hurt. It’s about trusting God with justice—and choosing freedom over bitterness.

Elul 21 :: What's That I Smell?

The sense of smell is a powerful thing. Nothing takes us immediately to another time or another place like a "whiff" of something that triggers an event, memory, or person. Walking through the park one autumn day, we passed a shady, overgrown area that backed up to someone's yard where a pile of leaves was being (illegally) burned. The combination of damp and mildew with the smoke instantly transported me back to the rainforest where I lived for a time in Africa.

Growing up, and during the years raising my own children, a fond memory was the baking of cinnamon rolls for special occasions. Even now, the smell of fresh bread or cookies when I walk into a house or bakery throws out any sense of determination to shed a few pounds or count calories. It is the same phenomena that prompts realtors to pop a batch of cinnamon rolls into the oven for an open house home showing.

Reading today's Elul devotion brought up those memories because it related the idea of Sabbath observance with the fragrant and inviting aromas of fresh bread and frankincense that would fill the Temple. But today, "The new dwelling place on earth in which the Holy One has chosen to dwell is none other than the hearts, minds, souls, and bodies of His People."

That thought makes me more conscious of the fact that we should be living our lives in such a way that those around us are catching a whiff of YHVH at work in us... or, "the scent of the Bread of Life and the aroma of humility, gratitude, lovingkindness, prayerfulness, praise and worship."

For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. - II Corinthians 2:15-16 (NKJV)

Shabbat shalom from our home