The Book of Lamentations is an acrostic (i.e., alphabetical) poem that begins with the Hebrew letter Aleph (א) in the word “eichah” (אֵיכָה), which also marks the Hebrew name of the book. “How (eichah) lonely sits the city that once was full of people!” (Lam. 1:1). The sages note that this word “how” (i.e., eichah) could also be read as “where are you?” (i.e., ayeka: אַיֶּכָּה), God’s first word spoken to Adam after he broke covenant in the Garden (Gen. 3:9). Note that God’s question is often our own: “Where are you? Where are you, God? Are you here, in the midst of this tedious moment? Do you know my loneliness, my ache for love? Do you understand the troubles of my heart?” And yet how many people have faith that God’s call is one of comfort and restoration? God uses our loneliness (“how lonely…”) to search our hearts, asking each of us, ayeka – “Where are you?” “Why have you turned away from me and chosen a state of exile?” Our haunting sense of God’s absence impels us to seek for him… God awaits our only possible response, “Hashivenu!” — an imperative (urgent appeal) for the grace to repent: “Turn us back to yourself, O LORD, so that we may return to you; renew our days as of old” (Lam. 5:21).
Our response to the questioning love of the LORD is called teshuvah (“turning [shuv] to God”). Teshuvah is an “answer” to a shelah, or a question. God’s love for us is the question, and our teshuvah – our turning of the heart toward Him – is the answer. As Jeremiah confessed in the hour of great trouble: “I called upon thy name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit; Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry. Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, Fear not” (Lam. 3:55-57).
…
Though the world system corrupts the message of the birth of Messiah for the sake of avarice and greed, take a moment to reflect on its ongoing spiritual significance, namely, that God emptied Himself (κένωσις) of His regal glory and power to become your Savior and High Priest, able to fully sympathize with your weakness, frailty, shame, and chronic sinfulness (Heb. 4:15-16; Phil 2:7-8). Almighty God, the Presence of Love, the Heart of Reality, clothed himself in human flesh and bone to become Immanu’el (עִמָּנוּ אֵל) – “God with us” – so that we could be touched by Him, healed by Him, and redeemed by Him… In light of this, it is only fitting we should join the refrain of heavenly host: “Glory to God in the highest, and upon earth peace, good will among all people!” (Luke 2:14). Amen! Yeshua is the Eternal Sign and Wonder of the LORD God Almighty…
Surely our great need is to have heart, to find strength, resolution, and steadfast determination to walk boldly during these heartless and depraved days (2 Tim. 3:1-5). We are not without God’s help, of course. Yeshua told us that the Ruach HaKodesh (רוּחַ הַקּדֶשׁ) would be “called alongside” (παράκλητος) to comfort us on the journey. The English verb “comfort” literally means “to give strength” (from com- [“with”] and fortis [“strong”]), an idea similarly expressed by the verb “encourage,” that is, to “put heart [i.e., ‘core’] within the soul.” In Hebrew, the word courage is expressed by the phrase ometz lev (אמֶץ לֵב), meaning “strong of heart,” denoting an inner quality of the will rather than of the intellect. Ometz lev means having an inner resolve, a passion, and a direction. The sages say “the mind is the eye, whereas the heart is the feet.” May God be our Light and Salvation as we walk through the surrounding darkness…
An honest person is a humble person, since honesty compels the soul to confess the truth that it is profoundly ignorant, incapable of understanding even the simplest matters of life, and entirely powerless to heal itself… People argue over words, concepts, and abstractions, inflating their opinions above even the Reality they purport to define, but the humble soul acknowledges that he doesn’t really know much about anything… And if “all the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly,” then how is it that people get puffed up and proud regarding their supposed knowledge of God Himself? Far better to approach God in deep reverence, wonder, love, and childlike trust than to profess a theology based on pride and illusions…
God’s Name is “I-AM-with-you-always,” imanu-El (עִמָּנוּ אֵל) – always in the midst of you, your heart, your Center (Matt. 28:20; Isa. 41:10, Psalm 23:4, etc)…. The LORD is so named because he is never without his own, and we are who we are in relation to his presence in our lives. Yeshua is not simply the Lord of the past or the Lord of the future, but the Lord of this moment, this “here” and this “now.” He is the same yesterday, today, and forever – the breath of life, our sustaining hope, the Shepherd of our souls… Whatever else may come of this day, this is the day that the LORD has made, and we find peace in God’s Presence… Let us look to Him in this hour!
(Originally published Dec. 20, 2020)
The message of 
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 find offence in others, we are 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 are symptomatic of hardhearted unforgiveness, and failing to remember that all that is good in your life you owe exclusively to 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?
You’ve likely have heard the saying, “hate the sin, love the sinner,” and while it is true that we should hate sin (most of all, our own sin), it is contrary to the gospel to hate the sinner. After all, Christ died for the ungodly; he came to seek and to save those who are lost (Luke 19:10). “God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Yeshua died for us – the just for the unjust – that we may reconciled with him (Rom. 5:8; 1 Pet. 3:8; 2 Cor. 5:21). Indeed Yeshua was maligned by the self-righteous of his day by being called “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34, 15:2). So it is a spiritual misstep to hate the sinner because we hate their sin.
From our Torah portion this week (i.e., 