I am such an idiot at times

   missing out on the best

     because I fancy something

        that’s just okay, just nice

   missing out on the best

      because -

            not now, God,

            not now,

            right now I want to play

            right now I need

            to check these emails

            right now I want

            to read the paper

            do sudoku

            the washing-up needs doing

            right now is

            just not convenient, God,

                             and I know you’re always there.

***

The King of Kings

invites you

to sit on his lap

and bask in his love

And what do we say?

I’m busy

Can I take a raincheck?

***

I’m sorry, Lord,

that I forget

again and again I forget

how wonderful it is

to sit with you

to talk with you

to just be with you

In all the day-to-day stuff

I forget about your love

and your joy

and your peace.

Thank you for loving such an idiot as me.

***

And they tell me, don’t write on the Sabbath!

What would they have me do

with the poetry you give me?

Allow it to dissolve,

to disappear into my crowded thoughts

and never to be shared with anyone else,

never be looked at again?

Oh no, I hear you say,

you made Shabbat for us, not us to serve Shabbat.

Enjoy it, I hear you say,

enjoy my Shabbat.

Back to Jonah again - such a short book and so much in there! There's a verse there that stopped me in my tracks - chapter 1, verse 9. Jonah is in the boat, the storm is raging, the sailors have come to the conclusion that Jonah is the reason for the storm, and they want to know who his god is, which god is it that is doing this and how could they placate him. So they interrogate Jonah: who are you, where do you come from - because in their way of thinking, these questions provide the answer to "who is your god". And Jonah, who I suspect has actually been thinking like that too up to now - why else would he think that getting in a boat and going somewhere far away would be helpful in getting away from God? He obviously hadn't realised the implications of some of the basic facts he'd heard about God, that he is the creator and ruler of the whole world and is not limited to one geographical area. I think this verse marks a turning point for Jonah, when he finds himself telling these guys that his God is "the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land". (I'm using the NKJV here as I feel it's a closer translation from the Hebrew.)

But what was it that stopped me in my tracks? Looking at Jonah's reply: "I am a Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." Did you notice? He says he fears the LORD, or in other translations: he worships the LORD. (In Hebrew: ואת ה' אלהי השמיים אני ירא)

I look at this sentence and feel like shouting: Jonah, if you fear the LORD, then what are you doing in a boat heading in the opposite direction to where he told you to go?!!!

I kind of think Jonah must have heard himself at that point and realised how ridiculous his behaviour was.

But I wonder whether we sometimes don't realise how ridiculous our own behaviour is, how we are able to say one thing and do another. And part of the issue is: what do we actually mean by the words we say? (That is assuming we mean something by them - it is perfectly possible for people to stand in church every Sunday reciting the creed without actually believing a word of it; or to say prayers in a synagogue just because it's tradition.)

The traditional Christian creed starts with the words "I believe", but these words can mean different things to different people. Every now and again we have surveys published that tell us what percentage of the population say they believe in God, and the percentage sounds quite high until you think: what did these people mean when they said that? Some people would say things like: I believe God exists; I believe someone made this world; I believe someone is watching over us.

Well, how nice. So you believe that God exists. You believe that he made the world. Maybe you even believe he looks after you. Maybe you even believe he might hear the odd prayer you throw in his direction when things are really bad. Is that what faith in God is really about? Is that the kind of "I believe" that God is looking for?

No. The Bible says even the demons believe (James 2:19) - they believe the facts about God, they know very well he exists, but they choose to serve Satan instead.

So what do I mean when I say I believe in God? I mean I trust in him, and choose to serve him and only him.

What do I mean when I say I believe in Jesus, the Messiah, the Saviour of the world? I mean I trust that what he did by dying as the ultimate sacrifice is all that is required for my salvation, it's all that is necessary for me to get to heaven when I die - despite all that wrong that I've done - and not just all that is necessary, but the only possible way.

That's what faith is - it's not just believing a set of facts about God, it's taking him at his word, trusting him, and making him my real lord and master because serving him is the only way that makes sense when you know these facts, because he is the only one worth serving, because he deserves everything I've got to give after all he's done for me, because he is so wonderful and amazing that even if he doesn't do anything for me he is still worthy of my thanks and praise and adoration.

I hope Jonah did get the message eventually. I'm very glad God was patient with me until I got the message - took me such a long time, even when I thought I'd got it, even when I was standing in church week after week and saying "I believe". I'd been doing that for over 12 years before I finally came to a real faith. But God is patient, and his love endures forever.

Will you be making any new year's resolutions tonight? Will you promise yourself that in 2008 you will get up at 6 every morning and do half an hour's exercise before going to work? Or that you will eat fresh fruit every day? Maybe you will resolve that in 2008 you will spend more time with your family or friends. If you're a churchgoer, maybe you're going to think in terms of getting up earlier each morning to start the day with some good quality prayer time.

But whatever your new year's resolutions might be, whatever it is that you would like to change about yourself and the way you live, how are you going to make it happen?

Can you make it happen?

Or are we just setting ourselves up for failure when we make these resolutions? I know, it's very tempting. A new year feels like the right time for a new start, a time for change. But if you've lived on this earth for a bit longer than a decade you will know by now that you've seen new years come and go and the truth is that not much has changed. The truth is that we make these resolutions with all the best intentions in the world, and if all it took was to have good intentions, we'd all be wonderfully healthy shiny people by now.

Of course I used to do it, I used to make all sorts of decisions, not just at new year. Sometimes it was when I'd been to church and heard an inspiring sermon - it was very easy to go home thinking, oh yes, I really will start praying more often; or, I really will read the Bible every day. Sometimes it was a book that inspired me. There were all sorts of things that would make me think that I could really do with changing some things about my life.

There were the sermons/books/whatever that reminded me that as a Christian I'm supposed to be loving, kind and patient. And oh how I tried!!! I kept trying. Now and again the miracle happened and I succeeded - managed to behave in a loving way towards someone at work who generally wound me up - but more often than not I failed miserably. I particularly remember one day at work when I spent half the afternoon quarrelling with a colleague (by email!) over a pair of scissors. When the boss heard about it he sent us both an email saying: I think you're both pathetic and you need your heads banged together. And he was right, it was pathetic behaviour. And especially pathetic on my part as I claimed to be a Christian!

The trouble is, I was trying to be a Christian but I was trying to do it in my own strength, and that's just impossible. Love your neighbour as yourself - does that sound humanly possible? Of course it isn't. Our human nature is selfish and self-centred - yes, we do have that godly bit inside us that brings out some degree of kindness and charity, because we were made in God's image after all. But his image in us has been spoiled since the Fall, so kindness doesn't come so naturally to us. If someone steps on your toe, your instinctive reaction is to express anger in some way, not to forgive.

For years I managed to go to church regularly and still miss the point. Thinking of myself as a Christian and wondering why I found it so hard to live up to that name. Sometimes not even wondering - sometimes not realising that I wasn't living up to it.

What was the point that I'd missed, you ask? Just this: that it is humanly impossible to live God's way, that without his help no one can do it, and that's why Jesus came to die, to pay the penalty that we deserve, because in our own strength we can't make it okay, no matter how many good deeds we do, no matter how many grannies we help across the road, we just haven't got it in us to make up for our sinful nature and we haven't got it in us to change the way we are!

It was on 1 July 2002 that I finally came to the point of surrendering to Jesus, admitting that I can't get it right, that I need his help, thanking him from the bottom of my heart that he accepted the death penalty instead of me, and asking him to be fully and totally and completely in charge of my life from that moment on.

Up to then, I'd been allowing him into bits of me here and there, so some change had been happening. But the moment that I gave my life over to him completely, that's when I was really given a new start, a new life, and it's him who has been changing me from the inside, it's not my efforts to be a better person.

New year's resolution? Here's the only resolution that is really worth making: resolve to give your life over to Jesus now, this moment, repent of your sins (that means not just saying sorry but making a conscious choice to turn away from them, to change your ways, with God's help), thank him for dying in your place, and accept him as your lord and master. Then you will experience a real new start, a new life.

According to a brief item in the Faith News section of the Times last Saturday, the general secretary of the Hindu Council UK is calling for attempts to convert members of one faith to another belief to be made "a crime under international law".

So he wants it to be against the law for me to tell someone that I believe worshipping a cow is wrong and that they should worship God, who created this world including the cows?

The amazing thing is that this kind of talk comes in the name of tolerance. It's not just the Hindus. You get this kind of comment from all directions in this pluralistic society we live in here in England - we should all respect each other's point of view, we shouldn't be trying to persuade anyone else that our way is better. Which means tolerance of everyone's point of view as long as that point of view does not include a belief that their way is the right way. Which is not tolerance at all!

If I didn't believe that Jesus is the best way and indeed the only way to God, why would I bother with him? I could have kept things much simpler, stuck to the normal Jewish ways and not risked alienating my family.

What does Yom Kippur mean to you? What does it mean to each of us? For me as a child it meant a day of not eating or drinking - that's all. We didn't go to synagogue and I don't remember being aware of anyone in our family praying. It's only in recent years, as I have come to believe and trust in God, that I think about it at all, trying to work out in what way I personally will observe this day. Take two Jews and you get three opinions, they say, so I guess I'm entitled to one and a half opinions on this matter.

So, what does Yom Kippur mean to me now? First of all a reminder that we are all sinners, all in need of kapparah, atonement. There is a lovely, simple gospel song that goes something like this: "It's me, it's me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer. Not my brother, not my sister, but me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer." And that's it, that's the thing that is so easy to forget in our day-to-day lives, as we moan and grumble about what others do wrong, as we allow ourselves the comfort of feeling that others are much worse sinners than us - after all, compared to people like Hitler or Bin Laden, we are perfect, aren't we?

But when I pause, stop the day-to-day busyness and take time to think and pray, take time to look at myself with God's eyes - oh, no, it's too much to bear! I know I'm far from perfect. I know not just how I behave but how I think and feel. I know not just how I in fact reacted to that driver that cut me up on the road, I know how I really felt like reacting. I know not just the things I have done wrong - and they are many - but the evil thoughts I have allowed myself to think.

And this makes me so grateful for God's fantastic gift of atonement, of kappara, the gift that in his great love and mercy he offers to everyone through Messiah Yeshua.

If you haven't yet accepted this gift for yourself, I urge you to give it serious consideration. Whether or not you are fasting this Yom Kippur, whether or not you are praying this Yom Kippur, no amount of fasting or prayer can achieve the eternal atonement that we all need. God loves you and desires what is best for you. There is no sin that is too big for his forgiveness, nothing that is beyond his mercy. He has provided the ultimate kappara, the perfect sacrifice once and for all. Yeshua the Messiah went to death to pay for everyone's sins. Accept his gift once and for all, and live the rest of your life with the peace that only this perfect atonement can bring. He loves you. Don't turn your back on him.

If I was back home in Israel I would have had to have done all my shopping by early afternoon yesterday. The shops there will be closed now till Sunday - they're always closed on Shabbat (Saturday - the Jewish Sabbath) and this year Rosh Hashana (Jewish new year) falls on Thursday and Friday, which means three days off from work (nice) but also three days of the shops being closed (not so convenient). (oh, and no public transport, which is also not hugely convenient if you haven't got a car.)

Here in England there's only one day in the year (Christmas Day) when all the shops close and public transport stops.

So which is the better way?

I don't feel I have answers, just questions. I grew up as a secular Israeli and was thus one of a large part of the population who resented these laws being imposed on us in the name of a religion which we didn't understand and had no love for. Now I do believe in God and know that it was he who gave us the commandment to rest one day a week, and I believe that this commandment comes from his love for us - he knows our weaknesses, he knows we need a rest once in a while and he also knows that we are very good at forgetting that.

And this is what I see here in England, where we have the freedom to shop on any day of the week - I see people forgetting about the need to rest and relax, filling every moment with some sort of activity. Would it be better for us if one non-shopping day in the week was imposed on us (as it used to)? Would it force people to stop for a day and rest?

The trouble is I'm not so sure about that. Those of us who feel they have to keep busy will find ways of doing that, even if they fill their time with church activities. Why do some of us have this need to keep busy all the time? Is it to prove our worth? Is it to show that we're not bone idle? Is it in order to avoid stillness, because we're scared of hearing ourselves think for a change? Is it because we're afraid of hearing God speak to us (because he might have some uncomfortable things to say)?

I've got into the habit over the years of going away on retreat once in a while. I need it even now that I'm out of the rat race, even though I'm at home and you'd think I could easily spend time praying and listening to God whenever I want to - the problem is that when you're at home there are always a million other things you could be doing, and it's not always easy to focus on God when you can see the pile of ironing that's waiting for you. At home there's the computer, the phone, the washing up - lots of things I could fill my time with. Going away to a place that is set apart for the purpose, I can become still more easily and I don't have so many ways of shutting God out.

So in a way I need once in a while to curb my own freedom so that I would be able to spend more time doing what is actually really good for me! Isn't it weird, this human tendency (or is it just me?) to avoid doing what we know is really good for us?

Like I said, I have no answers, only questions. So now it's over to you - tell me what you think.

I bought a suitcase today.

This may not sound like a huge achievement, but to me this is something to thank God for in a big way. As the old song says, "well our feeble frame he knows", which, translated into slightly more modern lingo, means: he knows I'm weak and feeble, and he loves me as I am, he doesn't stand around with a big stick saying, you really should do better. He loves me. And he's big enough to cope with my weaknesses.

I don't remember when it was that I started thinking about the subject of buying a new suitcase. It was connected with the imminent flight - when travelling by car I don't need a suitcase, I use holdalls and that's fine. But for a flight one needs something bigger and sturdier. And my old suitcase has been through enough airport baggage handling, so I didn't think it was going to be up to the job this time.

But I didn't have much time & energy to go hunting. I spent one afternoon looking in my local town centre but everything I saw was either the wrong size, the wrong colour or the wrong price. I wanted something nice and simple, that's all. I didn't even think I needed it to have wheels, as I'm only throwing it in the back of the car and then onto an airport trolley. And it seems that all suitcases these days (don't I sound old...) have these wheel contraptions that mean the bottom isn't flat, which is a bit of a nuisance when packing.

So we get to today, and I'm thinking, I might have to use the old one after all and hope for the best - I'm not feeling up to a big shopping trip today, and tomorrow is Shabbat and I need to rest well before flying on Sunday, so... so I head to a nice little town nearby which has a nice little high street with shops that I like, but not lots of shops and the chances of finding something there seem rather remote, but it's just that emotionally that's all I could cope with today. There's one shop there where I remembered seeing suitcases, so I went in there, had a good look round, and didn't find anything I was convinced about. Again, some were too small, some looked horrible, some were just unbelievably expensive.

So I have a little stroll along the high street, and I stop outside a charity shop, and there it is, a nice simple blue suitcase, not very battered, standing there and waiting for me, and costing about one tenth of the lowest price I would possibly have had to pay for a new one. And the icing on the cake is that it's an old-fashioned one, with a flat bottom!

Isn't our heavenly father wonderful!!!

Both feel better after some prayer and some rest.

A few hours ago I felt absolutely exhausted. The fact that my computer was on a go-slow strike didn't help. It was worrying.

I asked God for wisdom. I asked people to pray. I switched the computer off and went and sat in an armchair for a while with a coffee and a book.

God is good. I feel much better. The computer is behaving itself again. Halleluiah!

Read the fantastic true story of the Israeli soldiers and the grey cat under the heading Divine Emissary in the article here. (You'll need to scroll down to get to it.)