Posts Tagged Hope
They Shall Even Sing
Posted by James in Uncategorized on January 13th, 2010
The meadows don sheep and the valleys cloak themselves with fodder, they shout joyfully, they even sing!
Psalm 65:14
Tanach, Stone Edition
As for me, I am poor and destitute, O God, hasten to me! You are my assistance and my deliverance; Hashem, do not delay!
Psalm 70:6
Tanach, Stone Edition
I will sing to Hashem while I live, I will sing praises to my God while I endure. May my words be sweet to Him – I will rejoice in Hashem.
Psalm 140:33-34
Tanach, Stone Edition
This isn’t about how well you sing when praising God (though, from a human perspective, some people sing better than others), but about how our worship is received by others and by God. When we worship God in our congregations, it is only right that our minds and hearts be turned only to Him in His Highest Heavens. Nevertheless, the people around us can hear our worship and sometimes, form opinions about what they think it means about us.
I’ve been in Bible studies where everyone was encouraged to offer a prayer to God aloud, going around in a circle from one student to the next. I remember being conscious of what I was going to say and feeling distracted from God by how my choice of words in my prayer would be received by the others. I’m also not the best of singers (I sing like a frog), so it’s taken me a very long time to allow myself to sing and be fully audible to the rest of the congregation on Shabbat, focusing on praising God and not on the sound of my voice.
But this isn’t the main point of the article. I’m not talking about someone who doesn’t sing well or who is slightly, socially awkward. What about the really “odd” person among us who we can hardly tolerate and do not accept?
The Shepherd’s Supervision
Posted by James in Uncategorized on September 26th, 2009
You are all sons of God through faith in Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus), for all of you who were baptized into Messiah have clothed yourselves with Messiah. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Messiah Yeshua. If you belong to Messiah, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. -Galatians 3:26-29
As believers in Yeshua, we attach ourselves to him and to the Father; the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. We have “faith” in the Father through the Son, but what is faith? Sometime ago, I wrote an article for this blog called What is Bitachon?. Bitachon is a Hebrew word that describes in amazing detail, all of the components that make up having true faith and trust in God. When we use the word “faith” in English, we tend to miss the full meaning of what God is asking of us.
Emunah is a component of Bitachon, defined as an “awareness of Hashem (The Lord; Hebrew: “The Name”) as all-powerful and in absolute control.” According to Dr. Menachem Kellner in his article for My Jewish Learning, “In the Torah, faith in God means trust, not belief in particular propositions”. I’ve already included the link to Dr. Kellner’s article, so you can read it in full. However, in short, Dr. Kellner gives Abraham as an example of emunah, when Abraham, at the Word of God, uprooted his entire family, and travelled to the Land he did not know (see Genesis 12:1-6).
The world is full of hardships and difficulties. No doubt, each of you reading this blog has crises, grief, worry, or lament in your lives. I know there are many of those experiences in my life and my heart as well. There are times when I can’t sleep. There are times when I weep, and pour out my very spirit at the feet of God, begging him for mercy and compassion. There are many, many things in my life; and in all our lives that we have no direct control over, yet those things seem to land on us like an avalanche of granite. Where is our hope?