“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:8). There are no conditions given here — other than your honest need to connect with God for help. “Purify your hearts, you double-minded ones” (δίψυχοι, lit. “two-souled ones”); make up your mind and be unified within your heart: “How long will you go limping between two different opinions?” (1 Kings 18:21). You are invited to come; God has made the way; your place at the table has been set and prepared. “Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith (ἐν πληροφορίᾳ πίστεως), with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful” (Heb. 10-22-23).
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?
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., 
Teshuvah (“repentance”) is often described as “turning” back to God, though practically speaking it is an ongoing turning, that is, a turning to God both in moments of ambiguity, pain, and distress, as well as in moments of respite and relative happiness… It is in the midst of the ego’s clamor, before the parade of worldly fears or pressures, in the crucible of “everydayness” that we must “come to ourselves” and (re)find God. In that sense, teshuvah is a sort of focus, a direction, a seeking, and a center of life, the place of constant repair for the inner breach we constantly feel. It’s a long road home to finally understand you belong at your Father’s table… That is the message of the parable of the prodigal’s return (see Luke 15:11-32).
C.S. Lewis once made the helpful distinction between “looking at” and “looking along” a sunbeam (Lewis: “Meditation in a Tool Shed,” 1945). In the former case the mind looks “at” the beam itself, from a supposedly “transcendental” perspective, as if it could objectively describe the thing in descriptive terms, as a “fact” or by reducing the phenomena to simpler, more “natural” terms (e.g., defining light as waves or particles or energy). In the latter case, the mind see “along” the beam in relationship with it, seeing by its means, as part of his horizon of experience, not focusing on it (as a fact) but experiencing other things through its agency, and interpreting them in a semantic world of interrelated meanings. Now Lewis’ point was that modern scientific humanism assumes it provides a “truer” interpretation of experience by looking “at” things, as for example, when it “reduces” (i.e., explains away) religious experience as a matter of genetics, sociology, psychology, or some other “natural” paradigm. Of course such a presupposition is without real warrant, since “looking at” something involves its own way of “looking along” the axis of assumptions hidden within its own methodology…. In short, there is no true “looking at” things as an independent observer, since everyone is affected by their own biases and assumptions they bring to experience. Such awareness should instill within every soul a deep sense of humility. Nevertheless, in questions of faith we are both look at and look along the contours of life to make inferences to the best explanation, and therefore as Lewis succinctly said, “ ‘I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.’ We (all of us) walk by faith, not by sight, and the only real question is what direction are we looking…
In light of the threat of an invasion from the east, King Jehoshaphat (המלך יהושפט) of Judah prayed: “O LORD, God of our fathers (יהוה אֱלֹהֵי אֲבֹתֵינוּ), are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you… O our God, will you not judge them? For we are powerless against this huge army that attacks us; we do not know what to do: but our eyes are upon you (כִּי עָלֶיךָ עֵינֵינוּ)… After he prayed, the Spirit of God spoke forth: “Thus says the LORD to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s'” (2 Chron. 20). Amen, Lord, our eyes are upon you…
We are warned not to destroy ourselves by allowing bitterness, anger, or fear to consume our hearts. In our Torah this week (