Our Daily Deliverance…

Just as we are to ask God for daily bread (לֶחֶם חֻקֵּנוּ), so we are to ask for daily deliverance: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us (חַלְּצֵנוּ) from evil” (Matt 6:13). Note that the term translated “evil” in many translations (“deliver us from evil”) is a substantive rather than an adjective: τοῦ πονηροῦ, the evil one… “Give us this day our daily deliverance from the evil one….” Our daily bread and our daily deliverance are connected with our decision to “choose life” (בַּחַרְתָּ בַּחַיִּים) — and to always choose life — even in moments we find difficult, distressing, and even when we might wish that we were no longer living… Choosing life means refusing to escape reality by evading the significance of our choices; it means finding the will to regard life as worthy; it implies that we will eat our bread in trust that the Lord is at work even in the darkest of hours (Passover occurred at midnight)… Choosing life means refusing to eat the fruit of death and to seek Yeshua, the Tree of Life. We live one day at a time; we only have today. We are given daily bread for this hour of our need. Today is the day of your deliverance – if you are willing to walk in it. Therefore, the Spirit of the Living God cries out, “Choose life and live!”

The Greatness of Noah….

Despite the fact that Torah plainly describes Noach as אִישׁ צַדִּיק / ish tzaddik: “a righteous man,” “blameless in his generation” (תָּמִים הָיָה בְּדרתָיו), and a man who “walked with God” (אֶת־הָאֱלהִים הִתְהַלֶּךְ־נחַ), Jewish tradition takes a somewhat ambiguous view of him, especially when he’s compared to Abraham, the father of the Jewish people… In the Midrash Tanchuma (מדרש תנחומא), for example, it is said that Noach was righteous “in his generation” — though he would not be so regarded in other generations. In other words, Noah was “relatively righteous” compared to the world at large, at least according to sages like Rashi, Maimonides, etc. However such an assessment is surely unfair, lashon ha’ra, and even chillul HaShem! After all, is not Noah ben Lamech perhaps one of the greatest examples of a person of faith given in the Torah? He was a descendant of the godly line of Seth who lived in a world filled with rampant and unbridled wickedness (Gen. 6:5), and yet he found grace in the eyes of the LORD (מָצָא חֵן בְּעֵינֵי יְהוָה) because of his faith as he walked with God (Gen. 6:8-9).  Indeed the very first time the word “grace” (חֵן) appears in the Torah concerns Noah: “Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (ונח מצא חן בעיני יהוה) — a phrase later ascribed to Moses himself (Exod. 33:12, 17).

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Idolatry and Rage…

We are warned not to destroy ourselves by allowing bitterness, anger, or fear to consume our hearts. In the Torah we read: “And you shall not bring an abominable thing (תּוֹעֵבָה) into your house and become devoted to destruction like it” (Deut. 7:26). The sages of the Mishnah said that yielding to rage is equivalent to idol worship and should never be brought into the home. Indeed, rage is linked with avodah zarah – idolatry – because it exalts the ego and claims that God can’t (or won’t) help you in your moment of testing or need. Being quick to anger reveals the presence of foolishness within the heart:

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Seeing the yet-unseen…

Just as Noah foresaw the great cataclysm to come, so we are to understand that the world above our heads and under our feet is destined to destruction, as we likewise await the promised world to come: “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever (וישׁוּעָתִי לְעוֹלָם תִּהְיֶה), and my righteousness will never be dismayed” (Isa. 51:6).

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The Call to Faith…

An implication of genuine faith in the LORD is the realization that your life is a sacred trust and therefore everything matters… Nothing is trivial; nothing is inconsequential. In the world to come you will be shocked to understand that everything you thought, everything you said, and everything you did was given to you from above, and therefore has tremendous significance (Matt. 12:36-37). Indeed, your entire life is on loan from heaven itself. Therefore “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness…” (Matt. 6:33). Faith invests all of the heart to the journey at hand; it seeks God’s presence in all things and trusts God in all its ways (Prov. 3:5-6). “The present form (τὸ σχῆμα) of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:31), and the heart of faith looks for a city whose designer and builder is God Himself (Heb. 11:10). “So we do not lose heart… For the things that are seen are turning to dust, but the things that are unseen endure forever” (2 Cor. 4:16-18).

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Our Father, Our King…

“Blessed are you, O LORD God of Israel our Father, forever and ever. Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the beauty and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all” (1 Chron. 29:10-11). Amen, amen. In light of this blessed truth, then, what is it but unbelief that incites us to fear, to become anxious, frustrated, angry, and to seek to control outcomes?

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Be Anxious for Nothing…

To those anxious over the latest rumor (or outrage) of the day, remind yourself that there is be more to life than what’s going on in this world… The invisible things of Him are “clearly seen” by the eye of faith. Therefore refuse to agree with this world’s way of seeing and its darkened visions; abandon the godless news of this age; take every thought captive to the truth of Messiah: test the spirits to see if they are truly from God. As it says in our Scriptures: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2).

Olam Malei – An Entire World…

God made you entirely unique, and no one else was created for the special role that you have in the overarching plan of Almighty God… Jewish tradition says that God created Adam alone as “olam malei” (עוֹלָם מָלֵא), “an entire world,” to teach that each individual is of great value and significance. “Thus anyone who sustains one individual has sustained the world; and anyone who destroys one individual has destroyed an entire world” (Sanhedrin 37a). In addition, God created man as a solitary creation to remind us that all people descend from a common source: No one has a greater or better lineage or “pedigree” than anyone else. Moreover, each of us is created with a radical sense of “aloneness,” a built in “hunger” for relationship and especially for God’s presence.

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Design and Substance…

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was tohu va’vohu – without form and empty, and darkness was over the face of the deep…” (Gen. 1:1-2). The sages comment that knowing that God created the heavens and the earth makes us realize that by themselves earthly things are without purpose and substance, since life in the natural world is havel havalim (הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים), “vanity of vanities,” apart from the design (form) and the substance of God. Faith in the upper “world” of God, that is, the heavenly realm, therefore evokes a sense of discontent and longing within the soul, and the temporal world and its pleasures will seem distracting and empty. This lack of form and emptiness was part of the original design of creation, however, since it was after God had created the universe that “he saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31).

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Mystery and Creation…

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why does anything exist at all? These are basic questions about the meaning of life. Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? “God created the universe,” you say, yes, but exactly why did He do so? What purpose did he have in mind? In particular, why were you created? What is the purpose of your life? What do you hope to achieve with the limited amount of time you have on this earth? Such questions brood within the soul, even if they are hidden from consciousness by various forms of busyness and distraction. At the outset of serious thinking about anything at all we are confronted with such ultimate questions. What is real? Why are we here? Where are we going? What does God want from us?

“Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him.” – Soren Kierkegaard

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