Meirav's posts with tag: food for thought
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.
Okay, here's something that I've been wrestling with and as it's come up recently in a debate elsewhere, maybe it's time I attempted to put my confused thoughts together. Be warned though - I have many more questions than answers! In fact, I'd love to hear any thoughts or insights that you have on this issue.
I'm leaving aside for the moment the question of which day of the week it should be - I know some people will want to stone me for saying this, but I really don't think it's that crucial, I think there's a principle in the Bible of having a day of rest, of not rushing around like headless chickens all the time but trusting God that he will provide all we need even if we dare to stop for a day. I think God gave us this gift out of his love and care for us, knowing the human tendency to work too hard and to keep pushing ourselves until we get a heart attack.
So far, so good. We have a principle of stopping work for a day, and resting. Sounds good. But what does that actually mean in practical terms? What does work mean? And what does rest mean? My questions come from realising that these terms can mean very different things to different people, or even to the same person at different stages of their lives.
When I was doing an ordinary 9-5 office job, it was very clear to me what work was. Work was what I did in the office, obviously... Some of you may have already noticed what's missing here - what about stuff like housework, I hear you saying. But then in those days I didn't do much of that (not that I do now, come to think of it) so this wasn't an issue for me. Having said that, I do remember visiting a Christian friend who was also working 9-5 but had a young daughter to look after and very different standards to me as far as housework was concerned, and I was surprised to see her doing the ironing on Sunday afternoon after church. My understanding of the Sabbath principle is that you would somehow squeeze the ironing etc into the rest of the week, say in the evening after work, so that you could have a day that is completely restful. But I didn't ask my friend why she did it, and it just may be that she is one of those people who find ironing relaxing - who knows?
It could be very easy in a way to go with the list the rabbis put together of what you shouldn't do on the Sabbath - it would mean not having to think about it. But it would enslave me under a set of rules that I don't believe God intended. You see, he made me and he knows what I'm like, and he doesn't expect me to be like everybody else. He's made each of us different! And he knows that what is work for me is restful for you, and vice versa.
I remember when living with my friends up in Wales - I helped them run a retreat house and we had a "community day off" on Thursdays (Sunday was not an option for them as a day off as they were both church ministers). I was stunned to see one of them doing some gardening on a Thursday afternoon, but then discovered that for her, pottering in the garden was relaxing, it was a way to unwind and rest.
The rabbis would frown on gardening on the Sabbath. But then I expect they would also frown on, say, embroidery or knitting, which for me are fantastic ways into stillness. Or what about drawing or painting? At least they do allow going for a walk, but they tell you how far it's ok to walk - again laying down the same standard for all of us, no matter how fit we are! And they won't let you go for a nice drive, take the family somewhere nice for a stroll in the countryside, have a nice picnic, enjoy the beauty of creation.
I have seen how silly it can get, following the rabbis' rules and regulations. For instance, my mum keeps the rule about not writing on the Sabbath. So one Saturday afternoon - this was a few years ago when I was living with her - I was having a rest and she was going out for a walk with a friend. She needed to leave me a message, but couldn't write me a note. So what did she do? (My mum has always been very imaginative!) She got her Scrabble set out, chose the right letters from the bag and left me a message on the dining table made out of Scrabble letters, saying: Gone for a walk with Erika. Now, I take my hat off to my mum for the ingenuity, but I have to ask: which would have been the greater effort? To make this message out of Scrabble letters, or to write a quick note?
But having said that, if I try to define work in terms of effort, I run into problems too, because there are some things that we do for fun and relaxation that involve effort, like playing sports for instance. (You'll notice I said "we do" not "I do"...)
You see why I said I had many questions and not so many answers?
The question of "what is work" has been a big question for me in recent years as I am not in a job and when people ask me "do you work?" or "what do you do?" I don't have a straightforward answer. No, I don't go out to work, I try to explain, and all sorts of well-intentioned people say, ah, so you're a housewife (or homemaker). Well, no, I'm not really. I'm at home and I do the household shopping and I cook a meal for us every night, I do some washing up once a day and once in a while I throw some clothes into the washing machine, but that's as far as my housekeeping goes. My husband does a fair bit - he's actually much more fussy than I am about cleanliness, so if he waited for me to notice it needed doing he'd wait a long time...
So, what is work for me right now? Well, cooking and washing up and supermarket shopping - definitely. Which is why I make a point of doing the shopping before the weekend so that I can have time off from that; and I've negotiated with my husband a couple of nights off from cooking over the weekend - either he cooks or we get a takeaway. Then there's coursework - it's quite obvious to me that that is work. And the course involves residential weekends, so obviously when I have one of those, I have to take a day off in the week instead.
Oops, I said "obviously" but that's just obvious to me, not to everyone. Many people on the course work full time and so they come on Friday straight from work and on Monday they're back at work. I don't know how they do it! And here's a question: is it right?
But another non-obvious bit about this is that for some people on the course, those weekends feel like a break, like being away on holiday. I've spoken to some women on the course who so enjoy being cooked for and not having to do the washing up! For me these weekends are something to be endured and survived - as a night owl having to be up before 7am, and as an introvert having to be with people all day, I get through these weekends with the help of coffee and chocolate and then I come home and crash. But for extroverts, who thrive on being in company, I can see that it could be positive and recharging.
This issue comes up for me again and again when I go away on Messianic conferences. I love these get-togethers and wouldn't miss them for (pretty much) anything, but... I struggle with the Sabbath issue. We do the candles and wine on Friday evening, welcoming Shabbat. We do the Havdalah on Saturday evening, saying goodbye to Shabbat. But for me as an introvert and a night owl, this is not a Sabbath, it's a day in which I'm pushing myself to be up early, having to interact with people over breakfast, and there's no way I can see this as keeping the Sabbath. I come home from such a conference and have a day off on the Monday to rest and recharge.
And here's another question: surely there are some things that are work for you but you still simply have to do them on the Sabbath? If you're a farmer, no doubt you still have to feed the animals and milk the cows. And if you're the mother of a young baby, you won't leave the baby in dirty nappies for a day, will you? I suppose some things can be resolved by getting someone else to do them, but a breastfeeding mum wouldn't really be able to delegate... So how does she go about having a Sabbath rest? or doesn't she?
Just a few questions... Would love to hear what you think. Do you have a regular day of rest? What does rest mean for you? How do you interpret the Sabbath principle in your own life?
One of my favourite Times columnists, Michael Gove, wrote yesterday expressing his longing for "pure immersion in the moment". He said he'd love to read our thoughts about the best way of being "fully present", but when I went onto the Times website I found that they give us a maximum of 300 characters to comment! Yes, you read right - 300 characters, not 300 words. How on earth can I squeeze all that I have to say about this subject into 300 characters without resorting to TxtSpk? I'm not going to try and compete with his suggestion of surfing, as risk-taking just isn't the way I get my buzz, though I can see how a feeling of danger can bring about a total focus on what's going on for you at that moment, I'm sure that facing a huge wave and concentrating on survival would mean you don't suddenly find yourself thinking about the shopping list or the person you were supposed to be phoning or the report for the boss. But there are other ways of getting that pure focus. (Actually, I was surprised to find a man asking about this - my impression has been that men are much better than us at focusing on whatever they're doing and forgetting about everything else, whilst women tend to juggle lots more different activities and are not so good at shutting out the world and its distractions, which is probably the way we're programmed so that we could be good mothers. Babies wouldn't survive very well if their mothers were too good at focusing on what they're doing to the exclusion of everything else.) But the question was about ways of being fully present in the moment, which is, as he says, quite rare these days as people tend to rush around so much - the developments of technology, instead of those optimistic fantasies of a life of leisure which I remember reading about in sci-fi when I was young, have brought us more pressure, higher expectations, and much less peace and quiet. To be able to focus on the moment these days you need to switch off a huge number of gadgets! One of the things that I find crucial to my sanity is the ability to switch things off. Even now as I write, I've got the email closed and have signed out of Messenger - useful as they are, these things are likely to distract me from my writing. Yes, writing has to be near the top of my list - being creative is something you can fully immerse yourself in, so much so that I've been known at times to forget about supper because I was so immersed in a story. And I expect people who are creative in other ways - painting or sculpture or whatever - probably experience the same thing, total immersion in what you are creating. Praying can sometimes do that for me - not always, because often I am very distracted, but now and again there are these special moments when I am totally and wonderfully aware of God's presence, and nothing else matters, there's just me and him and total bliss. Even better than making love - which of course is another opportunity for totally immersing yourself in the moment and forgetting about the boring and mundane elements of life. And then there are those little moments that are on offer but so often we don't feel we have the time to really enjoy, like watching a rainbow or a butterfly, or pausing to cuddle a cat. Children are so much better at this - somehow we lose it as we grow up and allow ourselves to become more and more burdened with To Do lists. But the choice is still there - seeing the neighbour's cat in our back garden when I go out with the rubbish, I could tell myself I've got a zillion things to do, or I could stop for a minute and really enjoy stroking the cat. I find if I allow myself that moment of pure delight, I then have much more energy to tackle my To Do list afterwards.
Tomorrow is the Jewish festival of Purim, in which we celebrate our deliverance from the hands of the evil Haman, who wanted to destroy all Jews because of one particular Jew who had seriously irritated him. Haman had a cunning plan which seemed failsafe, but what do you know, it turned out in the end that God had other plans and thanks to God we are alive to tell the story and to celebrate. But God is not mentioned in the book of Esther (the book in the Bible that tells this story) - in this case, as so very often happens, God used a human being to bring about his plans. And when we look at people in the Bible who found themselves used by God, what do we see? What are the requirements? Do we have to be particularly strong? especially intelligent? Actually it seems quite often to be the opposite - God uses people who seem weak and useless by human terms, because that way we can see that it's God at work. And in this case he chose a beauty queen. A girl whose only known attribute is that she won a beauty contest. Hardly the sort of person we would expect to act as a major hero! She wasn't hero material really. Her first reaction when Mordechai suggests that she must go to the King is along the lines of: you've got to be joking! you think I've got a death wish? She has good reason to be scared. The rule is that if you go to see the King uninvited, you can be put to death. What Mordechai is asking her to do is a huge risk. But then Mordechai points out to her that actually, as she is Jewish, if Haman's plot succeeds she will die anyway. "And who knows," he says, "but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?" In other words, if you've thought of yourself as just a pretty girl, think again: God may have a special calling for you, he may have brought you to this place for a purpose. And Esther, our pretty young girl who was no hero material in human terms, rose to the challenge. She accepted her calling, saying she would go to the King "and if I prerish, I perish." Tomorrow in the church calendar is the day commemorating another person who accepted his calling and risked death to save people - in this case the whole world and not only the Jews, though he did come first of all "for the lost sheep of Israel". In his case death was not just a risk but part of the job description - he came to be "the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world". Two unlikely Jewish heroes, each accepting the purpose for which they were put in that time and place, risking everything to save others. The challenge that I see here for us is this: will we be obedient when God calls us to take risks for him? Will we be sensitive to his calling and obedient when we hear it? Because who knows but that we have been put here for such a time as this?
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.
Okay, for those who aren't familiar with the story, Jonah was a very reluctant prophet sent by God to preach to the people of Nineveh - a place which for him was enemy territory, so not surprisingly he didn't fancy the job. Not that he was worried about his safety - no, what comes out towards the end of the book is that he didn't want to give them a last chance to repent and receive God's forgiveness. They were his enemies, as far as he was concerned they were the bad guys, and he didn't want to go and deliver God's warning, he wanted them to be punished, and punished badly. He wanted to see them suffer. Does this ring any bells? I wonder how it would feel for an Israeli today to be sent by God to preach to the president of Iran, for example. Or how about being sent with a message from God to Hamas HQ? Those of us who believe in Jesus have been entrusted with the Gospel, the good news of salvation available to all mankind - are we always willing to go where God sends us with this message, or do we have our own Nineveh, the places/people we don't want to preach to, because we'd much rather see them punished? Jesus said: "But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." (Matthew 5:44-45 NIV) It's not always going to be easy. But then he never said that following him was going to be a doddle. P.S. By the way, it doesn't have to be a place or a different nation, it could just be the unruly youth of your town, or your noisy neighbours, or people who cycle on the pavement. How about people who cut you up on the road? Or how about traffic wardens? Think about it. We've all got some sort of Nineveh!
Am reading The Kite Runner (by Khaled Hosseini) and came across a scene that says something very sad about the way we humans sometimes tend to think. (Warning: if you haven't read the book yet and don't want to know what happens then click away now...) The scene I'm talking about is the beating and rape of a young boy by a gang of kids. They're the neighbourhood bullies and they hate him because he's of the "wrong" ethnic group and because he once dared to stand up to the gang leader. They've cornered him in a secluded alley and this is their opportunity for revenge. They beat him up, and then, as they're holding him down on the ground, there is a debate amongst them about whether or not to rape him. (It's not that they're gay and are attracted to him, the purpose of the rape is not sexual gratification, just a way of thoroughly humiliating the boy and teaching him not to mess with them.) The bit that got me thinking was when one of the boys says: "My father says it's sinful." You could easily miss it, it's such a brief sentence. But if you pause for a moment and think, you will see what is so horrifying about it - and this kind of thing happens all over the world all the time, not just in Afghanistan in the 1970s. This boy expresses no problem with cruelty to a fellow human being, he has no issue with the three of them beating this kid to a pulp, he is not concerned for their victim's feelings. He is concerned about one aspect of this: that his father told him that having sex with another man is a sin, so if he does that he may get into trouble with his God. He is worrying about getting punished for contravening a certain regulation to do with sexual morality, but he is not concerned about what to most of us hopefully is clearly a sin, which is cruelty and violence towards another person. He's not thinking it's wrong to treat this kid in this way, he's just worrying about contaminating himself spiritually by doing an immoral sexual act. It would be easy to point fingers and say, well, what do they know, they're moslems. But that wouldn't be true - people of different faiths have managed to do this sort of thing, to focus on certain aspects of right and wrong whilst developing a blindness to other aspects. Didn't our Jewish prophets cry out to us centuries ago to wake up and realise that God is much more interested in how we treated the poor and marginalised than in the sacrifices we brought to the Temple? (And I can't help thinking of some of our folk today who somehow manage to think it's okay to throw stones at fellow Jews because they are seen to be violating the Sabbath. Focusing on Sabbath-keeping but not quite practising Love Your Neighbour...) And sadly Christians too have been known to fall into this trap. Those who tortured Jews during the Spanish Inquisition thought of themselves as very devout Christians! When I was learning to drive, much emphasis was placed on checking your blind spot before moving off. Lord God, help us all to keep checking our blind spots!
I saw this advert in the Times today about training to be a Life Coach. It says: "Coaching starts from the awareness that you can be, do and have anything you desire!" Does anyone seriously believe this?!!! I mean, how is this going to work? Can I become six foot tall just by really really wanting to? Can my 89-year-old mother start playing tennis if she really sets her heart on it? Can my wheelchair-bound neighbour start walking by sheer willpower and determination? Bring back logical thinking! Now!!!
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.
There was a news item in my local paper about someone killed in a hit and run accident. And suddenly I found myself thinking: isn't it awful that we have a name for this? I mean, isn't it awful that someone running over a fellow human being and then leaving them there is a thing that has happened enough times for us to feel the need to give it a name? There are lots of things like that once you start thinking about it - words and phrases that tell us how low we have sunk. We have words and phrases to describe one person killing another, one person forcing another to do the thing that is supposed to be an act of love, one person paying another for this act, one person offering herself (or himself) to others for sexual gratification, one person physically hurting the person they claim to love, and so on and so forth - all these terrible things that we do to one another, that are so awful that they should really be unheard of, they should be shocking, they should be things that just don't happen... but they have become things that happen so much that we have given them names.
Here's a confession: sometimes, when I have a very long To Do List, instead of tackling it I find myself playing Hearts on the computer. It's a game for four people, but the computer generously provides you with three virtual opponents, whom you are free to name. I called mine Ernest, George and Leonard, after the characters in my favourite A A Milne poem. (Ernest, in case you don't know, was an elephant; Leonard was a lion; George was a goat; and James - with whom I strongly identify - was "a very small snail".) But I digress. (Though isn't digressing fun?) Sometimes when I play Hearts I get despondent. Because the way this game works is that you play one round after another (I think the official term is "trick", like in Bridge) and your points accumulate, and go on accumulating until someone reaches at least 100 and then the game ends (with the lowest score being the winning score). So if you have a few awful rounds, you get to the point when you start to feel that this is a pointless exercise (if pointless is the right word to use here in this context...) as you have no chance of winning the game when you're carrying all these awful points from previous rounds - even if you do really well in the next round, you don't feel like you stand a chance. And I find myself thinking: this is a bit like life without Jesus. You make some mistakes, you do some stupid things, and you go around carrying the guilt from the past and you feel: well, there's no point being good, no matter how good I'll be in the next round, I'm carrying so much guilt from the previous rounds... I was thinking about this recently when reading the book Brick Lane by Monica Ali (an excellent book, by the way) - the main character is a Moslem woman who ends up having an adulterous affair. It doesn't stop her devout praying etc, but she very clearly feels that after what she has done she is heading for hell and that's it, there's no chance of a pardon. When I finish a game of Hearts and start a new game, I get to start with a clean slate - no previous points. So I start out feeling hopeful: this time I'll do better. Of course I don't always do better, but every time I start a new game I get this new hope. Thank you Jesus that through you I have this hope in real 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.
She first met him in a church. She wasn't sure what she was doing there. "I'm Jewish, you see." "So am I," he said. "But..." She'd heard about him, of course she had, but she'd heard of him as the founder of some new foreign religion. She had never heard that he was actually a Jewish rabbi, who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah! It was love at first sight, but it took her years to begin to understand.
Have just finished reading a really nice novel (The Peacock Emporium by Jojo Moyes) and I find myself thinking: When did this happen?  At what point in the history of modern fiction did leaving your husband for someone else become a nice happy ending for a novel? I feel like going in search of the main character, Suzannah, and saying: Excuse me, but what exactly did you think when you said all that stuff about "till death do us part"? Did you have your fingers crossed behind your back as you stood there in your beautiful wedding dress, thinking, "Yes well... of course what I really mean is until I have some sort of midlife identity crisis and ditch you for someone with more fire in his blood"? How annoying that not one of the characters voices the view - is it really considered so outdated - that following your emotions is not necessarily the best course of action, that marriage is something to work at! Sorry, no, I now realise that there was one person who voiced that opinion - her poor husband when she told him she was leaving him. I wouldn't be so annoyed if he had been an awful husband, but his only fault seems to be his ability to remain content in the face of all the turbulence that life and his wife were dishing out to him. So he puts up with his wife binge-shopping them into debt, he puts up with his wife being moody and impossible when she's setting up in business, he puts up with her changing her mind about having children with him, he puts up with her general spoilt brat mentality throughout, all because presumably he actually took seriously those vows they made when they got married, but then his wife just suddenly says she's leaving, and that's that. End of marriage. Okay, I've got that off my chest now.  
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