Torah Club

Shabbat Shalom!

Yesterday was a long and glorious day.  Visited the Northeast area of Atlanta. Twyla explains why on her blog.

We left about a half hour before sunrise, and didn't return until about 17:50.  Moxie spent the day outside, guarding the farm and was, predictably on the little bed on the front porch when we arrived home.  So happy to see us she couldn't help but yelp with delight and dance around us for a solid ten minutes.

We pretty much got all the furniture in place, and so now it looks even more beautiful.  We managed to get all the chores done and some food warming up.  My bread dough had spent it's obligatory 24 hours in the fridge and was now rising well.  We set up for  the Qabbalat Shabbat service on the dining room table.  I blew the Shofar, to which Moxie now seems not so much frightened as curious about.  We said the prayers and lit the candles according to our siddur.  It was the most glorious welcoming of Shabbat that we have had so far.  We ate and relaxed and reveled in the beauty and what had been accomplished this week.

Shabbat Table before we re-decorated

The great thing is that our Torah Club IV materials had arrived Thursday, just in time to put them to use ha-yom (today) on Shabbat.  Twyla brought the first audio CD with us on the trip to Barrow County and we listened to the whole thing.  Great stuff.  It is the Gospels of the B'rit Hadashah or "New Testament" but with the insight of understanding from the Jewish perspective of the first century. The way it ought to be understood.  If you think that's a strange statement, you should stop to consider that Yeshua (Jesus) kept referring back to Torah and the Prophets and the Psalms to prove his identity and authority. He was respectfully called Rabbi by the Pharisees and considered sinless because He never violated the Torah (Law of Moses) and I think it would be pretty silly to argue that the Tanakh ("Old Testament") is anything less than a thoroughly Jewish thing. Peter, Paul, Luke, James, and John wrote the vast majority of the New Testament to the synagogues of the first century with the understanding that their readers understood Torah and the oral traditions and midrashes that would later become the Talmud.  But since the destruction of the second Temple in 70 A.D. with the further scattering of the Jews and the believers in Yeshua,  and the corruption of the "church" of the Roman Empire, much has been lost and confused.

But there is an amazing thing happening at this time in history.  Not only is Israel ("Ha'aretz Yisrael") blooming and fruiting like a beautiful fig tree, but many Jews are beginning to wonder about this Yeshua character and wonder if the ostensibly "christian" view of who he is,  isn't really correct.  Not only that, but lots of true believing Christians are waking up to the fact that a lot of traditional church doctrine just doesn't jibe with the overall understanding of Scripture.

We believe that Adonai is going to send the people who need to be here and study with us. It is in the works for the people who the Lord is calling to move here.  We have seen the Almighty bring about things that we never would have thought possible or would have expected.  As we strive to study and obey, even though imperfectly, He will be faithful to bring us together with others who seek Him in truth.

Shabbat Shalom!  Baruch habah b'Shem Adonai.  (Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord)

Rain Is Good

I once lived in Southern California for almost two years.

There is a hit song from the early 70's, It Never Rains In Southern California.  The song is true.  I think I saw maybe three days of rain out of 600.

It has it's advantages in many ways, but some people get tired of that after a while, as strange as that might seem. Of course, the nearly constant danger of wild fires can be enough to give some homeowners ulcers.

I've lived in Florida most of my life, in various areas, but mostly in the central or southern areas and on both coasts.  Florida may be called the Sunshine State, but it gets plenty of rain.  Rain up here, in the North Georgia mountains is different.  Because we are at about 2,400 feet elevation, often when it is raining, we are in the bottoms of the clouds.  It can be raining very lightly while visibility is maybe a hundred feet or less.  Our back yard gets a temporary waterfall, and streams form on either sides of the steps going down to the front yard.

My crops are getting a good soaking, and anybody who grows any kind of plants outdoors knows that rain has an effect on plants that artificial irrigation just can't match. I know it has to do with ionization and the lightning, etc., but the bottom line is that Adonai created it that way.  Man, with all of his ingenuity can try to imitate the wonderful engineering that he discovers in nature, but he can never quite duplicate it.

Another good thing about rain is that it can redirect your attention.  It rained all day yesterday and might do the same again today.  Yesterday, it meant that Twyla and I spent about two hours in Bible study.  I Samuel to be precise.  We take it slow and carefully.  I have the Hebrew Tanakh (Old Testament to Christians).  It has the Hebrew on the right side and the English translation on the left.  We also use the Hebrew/English Interlinear for further comparison. Then we have the Strong's Concordance to help understand some of the etymology of the words. You would be amazed at the stuff that you miss when you don't know what the original language says.  There is tremendous meaning in the very choice of the words, and how they are strung together. The Jewish sages have understood this for milennia, and it is the basis for the teachings of the Midrash, Talmud and the Kabbalistic writings, which the untrained have no business messing with.  But that's another post.

But my point is that it can be good to have your plans disrupted when it leads to things that draw you closer to the Creator.  Not as YOU think you understand Him or want to understand Him. But how He wants to be understood.  He dictated, (yes, I used that word on purpose) a message over a couple of thousand years, using more than 40 scribes; putting His supernatural fingerprints all throughout it, in order to tell us how we were designed to live and how to be in communion with our Creator.  Human beings royally screw up when they start thinking that they have the wisdom to decide what is right and wrong in their own minds and hearts. Without the objective truth of the ONE who created everything, we are pretty much just floundering around in stupidity.  I love the ending chapters of the book of Job, where Adonai finally speaks.   Go read it, and remember that epistemology is a good thing to understand. In other words, "How do you know what you know?"  A lot of people believe a lot of garbage that just isn't so, because they've never been educated how to think using logic and reason.

This is of such importance at this time in America's history that I think I shall post on the subject soon.

Shalom.