Yeshua forewarned that just before the End of Days, “many shall be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another” (Matt. 24:10). What dreadful people, you might imagine… what terrible depravity will mark that time! And yet here we are today, with so many crusading for their own personal sense of victimhood, demanding special treatment, and threatening retaliation for being treated unfairly… It must be remembered, however, that whenever we decry offence in others, we may be reflecting the evil within ourselves (Matt. 7:1-5). What is this evil within you ask? How about being intolerant toward those who differ from us? How about be impatient – refusing to allow others to share their perspectives? Indeed, how many of us make the demand that others be “perfect” but turn a blind eye to our own imperfections? And what about the sin of unforgiveness? What about our attitude of suspicion — using the “evil eye” regarding others’ motives – looking for something impure – rather than extending to them the benefit of the doubt? Do you carry resentment with your heart? Do you hold on to a grudge over a real (or imagined) insult from the past? Do you harbor the desire to seek revenge? All of these evil attitudes reveal a hard heart – and failing to remember that all that is good in your life comes exclusively by the mercy of God alone… When you feel offended, look within and carefully consider the assumptions at work in your thinking. Ask whether your indignation is based on the truth of God or something else. Are you demanding: “My will be done, in heaven as it is on earth?” Are you seeking your own vision, or surrendering to the truth of Reality?
Someone might object by saying that it is not right to overlook the evil we see in others, for example, the unjust practices of deceptive and immoral politicians, or the actions of criminals who commit acts of lawlessness. When we see evil, how do we see the good instead? Should we ignore wickedness and close our eyes to what is happening?
Well of course we should uphold law and the prosecution of criminals, and we should admonish (and sometimes even rebuke) our brothers and sisters when they sin, but in an ultimate sense, we have to see past the evil, to let it pass, in trust that God is sovereign and orders all things according to his sovereign purposes — and that implies understanding that God suffers evil to exist in order to demonstrate his judgment, as it says: “The LORD has made all things for its purpose — even the wicked for the day of evil” (Psalm 16:4).
To be a human being is a paradox, caught between the realms of the infinite and nothingness; a union of endless possibility yet terminating limitation. Man desires to live forever but is conscious that one day he will die. He is an incongruity – a mix of flesh and spirit, saint and sinner, good and evil, angel and animal… A spirituality that demands for us to be always happy, always “up,” is therefore dishonest, since the truth is grounded in what is real, and that includes both the miserable and the tragic as well as the joyful and sublime. It’s not that there is no difference between good and evil within the heart, but both are part of who we really are. It is the bittersweet struggle, the process of walking as “saintly sinners,” “holy fools,” “dying immortals,” and so on, that defines us. We must embrace our brokenness, in order to become whole; there is no healing without true confession of our need. Therefore we come to the paradoxical cross – the place of utter pain, separation, and death – to find healing, acceptance and life.
ONE OF THE GREATEST OF MISTAKES is to forget your beloved status before the LORD… “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isa. 43:1). Forgetting who you are leads to forgetting who the LORD is, just as forgetting who the LORD is leads to forgetting who you are… A passage from our Torah reading this week (i.e., 
The last month of the Jewish calendar (counting from Tishri) is called Elul (אֱלוּל), which begins at sundown on Saturday, August 7th this year. Traditionally, 
Our Torah portion this week (i.e., 
