Category: A Drash to Start the Day

What’s in a Name?

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In the famous play “Romeo and Juliet”, William Shakespeare wrote: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”

It was spoken by Juliet, who knew that Romeo’s last name was the last name of her family’s enemy.  Her point was that Romeo would still be Romeo, no matter what name he was called by.

My point is that God is God and Messiah is Messiah: no matter what name we use, that name will not change who they are.

Now, I am positive (and I base this on experience) that there are more than a few people reading this who are beginning to vent steam out of their ears because I am saying it doesn’t matter what name they use when they address God or Messiah.  To those people, using a name different from the one they think is correct is no less than blasphemy.

I do not think poorly of these people because I recognize their love for God and Messiah and their devotion to honoring them both. I respect the intensive research they have done over the years to come to the conclusion that they know the correct name. I also understand that to them, using any other name is an insult to God.

I would like to ask this of those people: Do you really think God will reject someone praying to Him with a contrite heart and a broken spirit (Psalm 51) just because the name they use is the only name they have ever known for Him?  Do you really think God will say to Himself, “That’s a nice prayer and I can see they are truly repentant, but I never liked –whatever- as my name so they can just go to hell.” ?  Really?

For myself, I cannot see God refusing a repentant sinner because the sinner calls out to God using a name that isn’t exactly the same name He told Moses.  I also cannot see Messiah refusing to represent a sinner that has called out to Him simply because “Jesus” isn’t the Hebrew name for Him.

Here’s a thought….when somebody tells someone else, as I have seen all too often, that the name they are using for God is wrong and implies that it won’t be heard, isn’t that the real insult to God? Isn’t that the same thing as saying God is too self-absorbed, too egocentric and too “picky” to accept a prayer to Him just because someone uses a name that may not be exactly the way God knows it should be pronounced?

I want to ask those people who are (pardon me for saying it this way) so obsessive about God’s “real” name to please try to remember God’s merciful nature, His understanding and His compassion; I would like to ask that you please STOP telling people that they have to use the name YOU think is right. Have you ever thought that you may be the one who is in the wrong? Could it be that you are the one who may be wrong because you are speaking for God?

Who are you, or me, or anyone to tell anybody else that their prayers and devotion are wrong just because they don’t call God the same name you call Him?

Did you ever consider that maybe, just maybe, your pronunciation is not correct? If so, are you willing to be judged in the same way that you are judging others?

Please think about that before you correct someone else.

I believe God and Messiah are both “big” enough to be able to handle someone mispronouncing their name. Don’t you?

And if it doesn’t bother them, it shouldn’t bother us.

Straining Out the Gnats

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In Matthew, Chapter 23 Yeshua is addressing the crowds and talking about the hypocrisy He sees in the Pharisees. He discusses how, in essence, they are more concerned about looking superior in people’s eyes then they are concerned with doing what is righteous in God’s eyes. They go through the motions of being righteous but they do not have righteousness as their goal. Instead, they seek the praise of men instead of acceptance by God.

Today I want to talk about one of the better known verses, Matthew 23:23-24:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin, but you have disregarded the weightier matters of the Law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. 

I see this all too often in the discussion groups I am a member of. There are many well-learned and knowledgeable people in these groups and I respect their understanding and years of study. However, when I see a discussion on a specific topic devolve into insulting accusations and judging of each other, I have to ask myself: is the topic a camel or a gnat?

Now don’t get me wrong: I enjoy discussing anything that has to do with God, Yeshua and the bible as much as anyone else, but what happens too many times is that the discussion turns ugly. People stop trying to edify each other or work to better understand God’s meaning because pridefulness rears its ugly head.

We are told not to judge others because how we judge others will be used to judge us. OK- everyone knows that, but how many people really understand what it means?  I am sure all of us have seen someone who thinks they are God’s own spokesperson, judging others and telling them that they are wrong, or that they will go to hell, that they are apostate, are demonically controlled….whatever. They accuse and abase people who may only need to be gently led into the truth of the Torah. But by being superior and judgmental, they are no better than the Pharisees Yeshua accused of hypocrisy. They turn people away from God by declaring themselves as an example of a godly person then acting in a way that is completely opposite of what they say they represent.

And why do they do this? Is it justified to call someone a sinner because they may say it is OK to wear a polyester blend? Or because someone else says it is fine to use the name “Jesus” in prayer? Is there anyone out there, really, who is authorized by God to determine who is going to hell and who isn’t? Are any of you in the place of God?

Oh, yes, I know what the prideful will say: “We are told that we will judge the earth and I am only judging you righteously.” Yes, there are those who will judge the earth…but not yet!

Who are we, any of us, to tell someone else today what God will decide about them later? Are we in the place of God? Are we above the messengers of God?

Let’s look at Y’hudah (Jude) 1:8-10:

But even the archangel Michael, when he disputed with the devil over the body of Moses, did not presume to bring a slanderous judgment against him, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” These men, however, slander what they do not understand, and like irrational animals, they will be destroyed by the things they do instinctively.…

King David tells us in Psalm 8 that God made us just a little lower than the angels. Well, if an archangel, the highest of all the angels, is willing to submit himself to God’s authority by not judging one who anyone and everyone knows is certainly deserving of judgement (Satan), then who are we to do so to each other?

I am not against discussing details and minutia that is in the bible. I mean, c’mon- I’m Jewish! If any of God’s creatures loves a good argument, it’s a Jew, right? So what am I kvetching about? It’s the pridefulness of people which a discussion will bring out when one is not paying attention to the more important things- compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and respect.

The gnat of a topic is strained while the sin of pridefulness is swallowed.

When someone says that they are ‘judging righteously,’ I hear nothing more than, “I know better than you and you need to acknowledge that by agreeing with me!” Maybe that person does know better, but does that give them the right to judge me? As a person? As a believer? As a child of God? Do they have the insight to see my heart? Do they have some special gift that can reach out across the Internet and know my inner desires?

No, it doesn’t. No one has that ability, unless God gives it to them, and I am pretty sure from what I have read about God that He wouldn’t give them that ability so that they can abase and insult people.

Again…don’t get me wrong. I am NOT saying we should allow others to sin without telling them about it. Far be it that we ever do that- their blood is then on our heads. NO! We must advise people when we see them sinning, or when they have a dangerously wrong interpretation of the Word of God. What I AM saying is that we must do this compassionately, with forgiveness for their ignorance (“Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do”) and also for their inappropriate response (if you get one) when we tell them.

We need to have the spiritual maturity to know when someone’s mind won’t be changed, and the emotional maturity to accept that they have a right to their own opinion. I have ended discussions nicely when I see that we are at loggerheads. In doing this I have been accused of being afraid of the truth, or stubborn, or lukewarm. I regret to say that I have been called worse things than that, all because I asked people to stop talking about something that we disagree on.

To bring it all together, let me finish by reiterating that discussion is valuable when it edifies people and can serve to help everyone involved better understand God’s word. My concern is that we all need to be aware of our innate pridefulness and remain humble with each other, discussing with love and respect for each other, as well as for God’s word, and to also remember that we are not to judge the world- not yet.

Therefore, we need to be careful when we enter into discussions about God, bible, or how to best obey the commandments. We need to be compassionate, understanding, forgiving and spiritually mature in our handling of both learned and neophyte Believers.

Any topic is only a “gnat” because the way we treat each other is a “camel.”

Speak truth to each other with humility and compassionate understanding, and until God Himself assigns us a throne in heaven we should follow the example of the archangel Michael and submit to God’s authority to judge others.

 

 

A Drash on The Ant and The Grasshopper

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For those that may not be familiar with the fable, here it is:

One bright day in late autumn a family of Ants were bustling about in the warm sunshine, drying out the grain they had stored up during the summer, when a starving Grasshopper, his fiddle under his arm, came up and humbly begged for a bite to eat.

“What!” cried the Ants in surprise, “haven’t you stored anything away for the winter? What in the world were you doing all last summer?”

“I didn’t have time to store up any food,” whined the Grasshopper; “I was so busy making music that before I knew it the summer was gone.”

The Ants shrugged their shoulders in disgust.

“Making music, were you?” they cried. “Very well; now dance!” And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work.

                                                                        There’s a time for work and a time for play.

The grasshopper was only concerned with what was fun and easy to do than with the hard work of preparing for his future. He was more interested in enjoying the warmth, ease of life and pleasant weather of the season without any concern for the changes to come. The ants, being more industrious, self-disciplined and aware of what was coming were working hard to meet the needs for the winter. In other words, they took a more mature view of their existence and knew that after the pleasures of the summertime winter was coming, and it would be a hard time to survive through.

I see this as the same sort of attitude that we see with Christians who only want to hear about the joy of salvation, about how much Yeshua (Jesus) loves them and how wonderful it will be when Messiah returns and they are raptured into the clouds to be with God forever. Nice stuff, really, but what about all the other things that God tells us will happen in those End Days?  How are they preparing to live through the Tribulations promised to occur in Revelation? How are they going to be able to maintain their faith is it is only based on the wonderful things about God?

God is going to destroy nearly 2/3 of the earth, including what is up in the sky, here on the land and down in the sea. Even the stars and heavenly bodies will be affected. And there is no guarantee that you and I won’t be here when it happens. There will also be persecution of those that worship God and reject the Antichrist. If someone is all about love and joy and acceptance, then how will they maintain their faith in God when the enemy of God offers them even more? Those who’s faith is based on the “nice” stuff will have that offered to them right now! They will be told, “You don’t have to wait, you can be powerful, happy, and have whatever you want right now if you simply accept my rule and bow down to me.”

Truth be told, God promises eternal joy, peace and comfort if we bow down to Him, too, so how can we know who we should bow down to? Maybe, just maybe, by reading the bible and being open to all that it says, the good and the bad, the joy and the tribulations to come, so that we will be able to recognize the lies of the enemy when we hear them. We need to be like the ants working hard (at our salvation) to prepare for winter. Those who only want to hear about joy and love are like the grasshopper, making pleasant music but not preparing for the hard times ahead.

The grasshopper will bow down to the enemy because he is all about the good times, and when things get hard he will be starving (spiritually) and will look for comfort from anyone who offers it.  But the ant, who knows what to expect, will reject the enemy because he knows what is coming and is preparing for it.  When things are hard, he will be (spiritually) prepared to last through the winter.

We need to be like the ant and not have blinders to the reality of the terrible things that will come before and when Messiah returns. He is not coming back as the Lamb of God- He is coming back as the Son of David, the conquering King of the world and it will be a real mishigas!

I also like to hear about the joy and peace we will have for all eternity when the Acharit HaYamim (End Days) have run their course. It’s great news!  And not only do I look forward to that day, faithfully expecting it to happen, but I also know of the terrible things we will have to get through BEFORE all that good stuff is here, with just as much faithful expectation.

And because I do know what is coming, I am prepared to get through it.

Many people I have known over the years since I accepted Messiah wear rose-colored blinders. They only want to hear about God’s love for them, and every discussion ends up, one way or another, with something along the lines of God loves us and He protects us and He is wonderful, yadda-yadda-yadda. Yes, God is all those things, and He is also judge, jury and executioner of the nations. As much as we can count on His promises of joy we can count on His promises of judgement. And that judgement is not going to be fun.

The grasshopper had fun while the sun shone, but his end was not a happy one, whereas the ants survived the tribulations of winter by working hard to prepare.

Judgement Day will be the worse type of winter you could ever imagine, so let me leave you today with this one question: are you a grasshopper or an ant?

What “Under the Law” Really Means

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This is not going to be a scholarly treatise on the differences in the Greek words used for “law”, or that Torah means “teaching”, or anything that involves anything more than just some common sense and a basic understanding of God’s plan of salvation.

So let’s start with how God’s plan of salvation works. It’s really quite simple: God gave the Torah through the Jewish people to all people so that we would know two things, and just two things. They are:

  1. How to worship God; and
  2. How to treat each other.

When we do as God tells us we should be doing, we are living in accordance to His will and thereby not sinning. When we do that which God says we should not do, then we are rejecting God’s commandments, which is called “sinning.” When we sin, that sin separates us from God and if we die in our sin we cannot be with Him throughout eternity. Salvation is available to those that ask for it and do not die in their sin.

Salvation starts with the Torah, which tells us how to not die in our sin by staying within God’s will. The problem we run into is that no one is able to live in accordance with Torah, so we all will die in our sin, unless we happen to die as we are exiting the Temple in Jerusalem right after performing a sin sacrifice.

Oh, wait a minute! The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed! That’s OK because God has us covered for that one; again, all part of the plan.

Right from the start, even before God gave us Torah, He knew this would all happen so He had a back-up plan. That plan is called Messiah. The Messiah would present Himself as a sin sacrifice for all people, and through His sacrifice we would be able to atone for our sin, even though the Temple is no longer available to us. Messiah’s sacrificed “trumped” the animal sacrificial system that was what we needed before Messiah came.

Today we try to live our lives as God told us we should (Torah) and when we fail to do that we ask for forgiveness, which we can receive as a result of our T’shuvah (repentance) and by means of the substitutionary sacrifice of Yeshua haMashiach.

That’s it! God gave the world the Torah (through the Jewish people) and because we couldn’t obey the Torah as we should, He sent Messiah Yeshua (again, through the Jewish people) to suffer the penalty we all (Jew and Gentile) deserve so that we can overcome sin and be in God’s presence for all eternity.

Now that we have a basic understanding of how salvation works, the next step is to understand the difference between being under the law and obedience to the law.

Under the law is a term used in the New Covenant writings to describe a system that understands salvation to be a result exclusively from obedience to rules and regulations. It doesn’t account for a desire to obey as a result of love for God. Faith is not needed in this system because salvation is only possible through performance.

Obedience to the law means that we choose to obey the rules and regulations that God gave us as a means of proving our T’shuvah (repentance) and comes from a desire to please God. It is not a means to gain salvation. Salvation is only possible through faith; we obey because we love God and show that by obedience to His word.

The Torah is the User Manual for staying in God’s will. We obey the Torah because we want to show God that we fear Him (as in honor and respect) and to show others how God wants them to act. We should obey Torah as a love response to God’s kindness, His sovereignty and His authority.

When we are obedient to Torah we are not doing so to “get into heaven”, but because we want to do as God says and because we respect and honor Him.

Obedience to Torah is not a means to be saved, it is a way to show God how much you love Him. In John 14:15 Yeshua told His Talmudim (disciples) that if they loved Him, they would obey Him: everything He taught was directly from the Torah, so to love Yeshua means to obey the Torah.

Can you see the difference now? Obedience to the law is all about faith and desire to please God, whereas under the law is nothing more than a means to an end.

And since no one can be perfectly under the law, those means lead to only one end- damnation.

Many people say they love Jesus, they love the Lord, they love, love, love…but do they ever even try to love God the way He asks them to? No- they excuse and rationalize disobedience to the Torah.

Do you love God? Do you love Yeshua? If so, do you prove it by living the way God says you should, or are you living the way you want to?

Which one do you think God will accept?

Can’t let This One Go (Amended)

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The original post had a mistake- I did not mention that Cruz had already been expelled before he went on his shooting spree. I have corrected the parts of this blog that were incorrect.

I don’t want to be political on this blog but I can’t let this one go.

The Florida Today paper has an article about the man (he is over 18) who killed the 17 people at the high school earlier this month (Feb/18) which says the school he attended wanted to have him transferred to another school that specializes in mental health issues since 2017.

Ever since 2013 Cruz (the confessed killer) had been a problem and well-known in his school for having severe mental health issues, such as swallowing gasoline and cutting himself. A mobile crisis team from a state funded organization, called Henderson Behavioral Services, in 2016 advised that Cruz was not a danger to himself or others because he was on a treatment plan for ADHD, depression, OCD and autism.

Not a danger? This kid was a walking parade of paranoia!! How could they say he wasn’t a danger to anyone simply because he was on a treatment plan? How many patients don’t follow their plan? What if someone had TB, a highly contagious disease and was taking medication: wouldn’t they still be dangerous to others? Until the TB was totally cured, they would still be contagious, right? But with mental illness, which isn’t contagious but still is dangerous, if you’re on a treatment plan then what? You’re suddenly OK? If he hadn’t been on a plan, would they have then restrained him for his own and other’s safety, or would they put him on a plan?

Either way it sounds like sweeping something under the rug.

But wait! It get’s worse…from 2014 through 2015 Cruz attended the other school and had no recorded incidents, but in 2013 at another school he had some 29 incidents, from unruly behavior to fighting.

In 2016 Henderson Behavioral received some $22 Million dollars on grants from the state to prevent people from being incorrectly hospitalized. To me that says that if they want to keep getting money, they need to keep recommending people do NOT  get hospitalized. 

They did that in Cruz’s case, and 17 people are now dead.

The defense wants to state that because Cruz wasn’t given the proper treatment by social workers and school counselors he should be spared the death sentence. In other words, they are saying that the “system” (my quotes) failed to help this boy (who committed the crimes when he was a man, legally) so the courts should take pity on him.

I say that if we hold the system responsible, in any way, then the system should also be held accountable in the same way.

Those people at Henderson who said Cruz wasn’t a danger to anyone should be charged with malpractice, and maybe even accomplice to murder, after the fact. If a medical doctor performs surgery or gives a misdiagnosis to someone, they are held accountable, legally, so why not the people at Henderson? Psychiatry is a science, is it not? As such, just like with the medical sciences, those that practice this science should be a held accountable when they make significant mistakes that result in harm or death.

Everyone is screaming about gun control, but the real cause of this heinous crime has nothing to do at all with guns- it is a combination of the lack of accountability for certain professional services and (I am sure somewhere in this debacle) it is also about money.

What if Henderson was given $22 Million dollars to properly treat mental illness instead of keeping the mentally ill “on the streets?”  Would there be 17 less graves in Florida today?

I say bring the people who misdiagnosed Cruz to justice, too. If people are not held accountable for what they do and say, then society will always be the victim of that irresponsible attitude.

Let’s bring God into this picture. The bible is clear that we ARE responsible for what we do and say: the watchmen in the the towers were held responsible for failing to warn the people of impending attack; the Prophets were held accountable if they didn’t warn the people what would happen if they fail to turn back to God; the Cohanim (Priests) were held accountable for failing to teach the people proper worship; and the King, himself, was held accountable for leading the people into sin. When the king, cohanim, prophets and watchmen (as in Shomron, the Northern Kingdom of Israel) all worked together to protect themselves and take advantage of their position (money, again) the innocent people of that society were the ultimate victims.

I am not saying Cruz is a victim of society’s failure, I am saying that the professionals who are paid to protect society from people like Cruz failed society- this isn’t society failing Cruz, it is society failing itself because we are more concerned with the rights of those that are anti-social then the rights of those that are law-abiding.

And that is totally against the bible, which is very, VERY clear we are to serve righteousness and remove sin from our presence. Cruz needed to be removed from the mainstream: that should have been (and I personally believe WAS) evident to everyone involved in this miscarriage of justice since 2013. But nobody did the right thing, and now 17 lives are lost and others traumatized because of the failure to act justly – not justly to one, but justly to everyone!

Here’s the last thing I want to point out: the paper reports that the county superintendent stated Cruz couldn’t be transferred to a school he didn’t want to go to because once he had turned 18 they are not legally able to force an adult to receive services. His history proved that he was not just a threat to himself and to others, but represented an escalating threat, yet no one made sure he was where he really needed to be- under the care of a professional mental health organization and safely away from society.  Yes, they kicked him out of school but that didn’t prevent him from shooting people. If the proper people had properly attended to him before he reached majority and made sure he was placed in a secured location receiving the help he needed, there would be 17 more students at the school today.

We have become a nation of people who see everyone as a victim and as such we feel they aren’t responsible, or at least should be given some level of mercy for society’s lack of help. HORSE APPLES!  I am sure that once we start to hold people legally accountable for their words and actions we will see fewer problems occurring. The bible teaches us to watch what we say and what we do, and that those who are a danger to society should be kept “outside of the camp.” In modern terms, that would mean some place where their mental issues could be properly treated. The ACLU will fight against that one, I am sure, and that is OK because that’s their claim to fame.

My position is that gun control is not an issue here- what really is the issue is that we need to get our society to concern itself with protecting the general populace and not to protect the individuals who have shown themselves to be a threat to society.

And I admit I don’t have the answer to this next question: how do we properly and fairly identifying the problem? That is going to be a problem.

The Other Side of the Doom and Gloom

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OK, OK…yes, I have been a little on the “It’s the end of the world” tirade lately. I have been told by my older sister, who one always has to listen to, that I need to “lighten up”, so let’s see what the balance scales have against the doom and gloom of God’s judgement on the nations.

Hey, guess what? It’s pretty good stuff on the other side! Those who have accepted Yeshua (Jesus) as their Messiah; who worship God as He has commanded (that means obeying the Torah); who live their lives always repentant of their sins; who are trying to follow the leading of the Ruach Ha Kodesh (Holy Spirit) which they accepted when they asked God for it as part of their forgiveness prayer…all those people are going to be spending eternity in total joy and peace, basking in the presence of the Almighty.

Now they will have to go through tribulations- not everyone will be lucky enough to escape this. God promises He will judge the nations in the Acharit haYamim (End Dyas) and I DO believe we are in them, now. The astrological signs (4 blood moons in a single year in 2017), the significant climatic changes we are seeing and the world-wide social unrest are all signs that we have been warned about from the Prophets in the Tanakh all the way through the Bible, including the letters from Shaul (Paul) and John’s recording of his vision in the book of Revelation.

It is happening now, it’s going to get worse and it is not going to be fun for anyone.

The good news is that for those of us who are God-fearing and working through our salvation, we will live past this event. We will not suffer the second death or be left in the cold and dark where people gnash their teeth. We will be presented before the Judge of All Things, the Lord, God and have at our side Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ) to represent us. God will not see our unworthiness but rather Messiah’s righteousness in us. We will be absolved, forgiven and welcomed into the presence of the Lord. Forever.

No more tears, no more sickness, no more disparity, no more suffering. Now that’s what I call a good word!

Going forward let’s recall what every Prophet in the Tanakh did when they spoke God’s warning to repent: they started off relating God’s promises of punishment for those who choose to reject His commandments, specifying the horrors that will befall them (that’s the doom and gloom), then they ended with a word of comfort for those who will choose repentance (REAL repentance), confirming for them that God promises they will have joy and eternal peace.

God tells us in Ezekiel 18:32 what He wants:

For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!

God’s judgement on those that have rejected Him will be terrible, and His blessings for those that worship Him will be wonderful.

Like the bank commercial that asks, “What’s in your wallet?” I am asking you now: “What’s in your heart?”

More Gloom and Doom to Report

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I feel a little like Jeremiah; he never had anything really good to talk about, either.

I was reading the paper this morning and decided that I should add a new viewpoint to my messages- showing where God is NOT in the news. I believe by seeing where we leave God out of our society we can get a better idea of where we need to add Him back in.

So, in this light, today I was reading about the aftermath of the mass shooting on this past Valentine’s Day here in Florida. Governor Scott has called a roundtable committee to discuss different actions that we should take to help prevent this sort of atrocity from happening. Here’s one thing that really scared me about the report: a psychologist from Florida State University College of Medicine has stated that by looking at the family history we may be able to predict the mental illness of the child and proactively act upon that. The paper reported she said that we can “predict pretty well which families will have this forward trajectory even before the child is born.”

I don’t know about you, but that scares the HE(double-hockey-sticks) out of me. Someone will be evaluating pregnant women and determine that the child will be mentally ill?  Who can do that? And if they do, then what? Should the child be placed in a program for the mentally ill and/or have his (or her) rights restricted? Does that sound good to you?

I also read today that yesterday in a Florida middle school some students were making jokes about shooting up the school. It was heard, reported and those two boys were taken into custody by the police. Now, what they did was totally stupid (if I was “PC” I would have said “inappropriate”, but it was STUPID), yet these are middle school aged boys- stupid is what we are at that age. I believe they should have been chewed out by the Principal and their parents should have been called in to take them home for that day. Do you think the school overreacted?  And if you don’t, do you think that in an atmosphere of fear that eventually people will tend to overreact? Isn’t that what history shows us does happen?

What I see happening here is that the government of the United States, at all levels, is advocating that everyone report about anyone who they think is a threat.

Sound familiar?

In major transportation hubs there are signs and announcements telling the people to report anything that they see as suspicious; schools are telling the students to report on anything they see or hear that they think is suspicious; and when we add the recent flurry of sexual harassment charges and the current (pardon the expression) exposure of this problem, more and more people are being sensitized to be afraid of almost anything anyone may say.

Here’s the doom and gloom- it will get worse. This is all a set-up for the enemy to take complete charge of our lives. We cannot overtake this, we cannot resolve it, and we cannot avoid it.

See why I feel like Jeremiah?

The enemy will rule by fear and intimidation, and this will not come from him (or maybe her) directly, but from each one of us. Just like in Nazi Germany, where children reported their parents and neighbors couldn’t were afraid that someone might say something that will get them in trouble, the atmosphere of fear and distrust is exactly what will help the enemy take charge.

This is also the kind of environment where people can “rat out” anyone that they have a personal grudge against.

I am not a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and neither am I a Libertarian, but I am someone who believes what I read in the Bible, and all this makes sense to me as a sign of the events yet to come that we are told about in God’s word. I am not saying there is no hope- what I am saying is that the only hope we have is in God. We must strengthen our faith and help lead others to God and Messiah as things worsen. We need to stop wasting energy, time and money trying to fix what God has decreed will happen, and get to work trying to save as many as we can, while we still have the time.

I am no Jeremiah and I do not profess to be a Prophet, but I do think I am on the right track when I say we need to prepare for what is coming because we cannot get out of the way.

I see the writing on the wall- do you?

Sheep Without a Shepherd

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Do any of you read Dear Abby? Or maybe Ask Ann Landers? I read these every morning, but not because I like to get some voyeuristic pleasure from sharing other’s problems with their lives. I see it as a thermometer, measuring the degree to which people in our society have no guidance, mostly regarding interpersonal relationships.

Often I get inspiration from the multitude of personal issues people present publically to a total stranger. I am always thinking of one of my favorite verses from the Tanakh, Hosea 4:6:

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

The knowledge they lack is the knowledge of God, the knowledge that comes from reading His Word every day, the understanding of the human condition that we see exemplified through the stories in the Bible. This is important stuff!

I feel saddened and frustrated when I read the almost inane situations people get themselves into; and then, as if they haven’t hurt themselves enough already, they go to Ann or Abby for help. For the record? I’ve got nothing against Ann or Abby. I think, overall, they do a wonderful job. And even though I wish they had more spiritual answers, they are usually spot on with their advice.

However, I can’t help thinking that if the people who write these letters stopped asking humans and went to God for help, they would find that God has the best answers.  All the time.

So, nu?  What can we do? We can make ourselves available to our own family and friends, to let them know that we have the same problems in our life but we also have the best answers, Then show them where the answers to their problems are found in the Bible.  When we relate our own story, not forcing it on anyone but just using it as an example of what worked for us, we can lead them to a better answer, a greener pasture.

And we should be prepared to be rejected and (maybe even) laughed at. That goes along with the territory and is part of the job when you live your life to help others.

Life is tough; there are many times we get ourselves into a situation we don’t want to be in. And when we are there, we cannot fathom how to get out of it.

That’s when we need to go to God. As we read in Matthew 19:26:

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Be a good shepherd to your family and friends and lead them to the answers they really need, which are always found in the Bible.

2018 20th Anniversary Trip to United Kingdom

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For our 20th anniversary, Donna and I went to Central Parcs at Woburn Forest, in Bedfordshire, England.

We went with our friends, Diana, David Jarvis, with their daughter Harriet, and also David’s sister, Dorothy Gonsalves.

The Central Parcs resorts have everything you need all in one place: water rides and pool (indoors), shopping, market, games, activities (indoor and out) and even a safari park close by.

I hope you enjoy watching these photos as much as we enjoyed creating them.