The Sin of Zealotry: In my previous entry, I used Queen Esther as a type of the continual struggle that women in my situation face on a daily basis: “In their zeal to be a good daughter of the Master, they run the risk of defying their own husbands, thus potentially alienating them from God and being partly responsible for their husbands’ failure to come to faith.” I also mentioned how the epitome of pharisaism is the continual act of straining at a gnat and inadvertently swallowing a camel, linking camel-swallowing to those who--either in their self-righteousness or (over-)zealousness for God--alienate and repel those who are unsaved all around them. I hadn’t really developed the fine line between zealousness and zealotry, but I was beginning to see a truth that has been playing out in my own life as I interact with my family.

I wrote the piece about Queen Esther before Yom Kippur. In services on Monday, I was surprised to see “zealotry” listed in the Ashamnoo (We Are Guilty) prayer in the Messianic Siddur for the High Holy Days, page 83. Here is part of the prayer:

We are guilty of....

Arrogance, blasphemy, corruption, and dereliction; evil counsel, frivolity, guile, hypocrisy, and insolence; jealousy, levity, mendacity, nefariousness, obstinancy, profanity, querulousness, rebelliousness, slander, and transgression; unrighteousness, villainy, wrongdoing, and zealotry.

Zealotry is a sin? What is zealotry anyway? Various dictionaries define it as “excessive zeal; fanaticism,” “fanatical devotion to a cause,” or “excessive intolerance of opposing views.” So if zealotry is excessive zeal, I suppose one could say that zealotry can be described as “too much of a good thing.” I don’t think this is the case.

I’m beginning to see that zealotry is a sinful distortion of zealousness, not simply “too much zeal.” Throughout the Bible, people are praised for their zealousness (e.g., Pinchas, who stopped the plague in Israel by slaying the Israelite and his Mideanitish concubine; all the believing Jews, who were recorded in the book of Acts as being zealous for the law). Even God calls himself zealous at times. Zealous is also closely related to and often interchangeable with the word “jealous,” such as when the LORD says he is a “jealous God.” Zealousness seeks the good of other individuals or an entire community, and it involves submission to God’s will in all things. Zealousness calls people to godly action and renders obedience that comes from the heart, not just from the head. It is akin to “righteous anger,” which fuels open rebuke or even military force against evil (e.g., Pinchas stopping the plague by an act of violence, or the Maccabees fighting against the forces of Antiochus and Hellenization), or being “on fire for the LORD” to do wonderful works that He calls one to do (e.g., Solomon‘s desire to build God’s temple, or the early believers sharing everything they had with one another).

Whereas zealousness is outward-looking, zealotry seeks to magnify or glorify the self. A zealot is so concerned about being “right” or doing the “right thing” even to the smallest minutiae, that he appears to those who are on the outside looking in to be a hateful, small-minded person. A zealot is above all things rigid; he is incapable of meeting people where they are, but rather tries to yank people up to his level, which in his mind is higher and more righteous. A secular corollary to zealotry would be “political correctness.” Those who are so easily offended or decide that everyone else is so easily offended become “word nazis” and among the most closed-minded and rigid of all people, massacring art and literature so as not to “offend.” The problem is that PCs are so offensive, and that is the irony of this: religious zealots, in their desire to appear righteous before men, actually appear unattractive to others, and they lose the prize that they wish to gain---they fail to attract others to the God that they claim to love, thereby sharing in the guilt when others fail to come to saving faith.

Paul is a shining example of a religious zealot turned truly zealous for God. Along with his saving vision of Yeshua on the road to Damascus came a totally different attitude on his part: instead of using his previous “slash and burn” approach (Paul the zealot imprisoned, tortured, and killed believers in his “zeal” for the law and tradition of the fathers) to convince others of the truth of the Gospel, Paul instead became truly zealous for God, doing things God’s way instead of his own way. God’s way is to meet people where they are and to speak to them in a way that they can understand. Some people can only be reached through the heart, others through the intellect, others by a life-shattering experience. Paul, when operating among the Greek pantheistic community, spoke to the Greeks in a way that they could understand so as to win some:

22: Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
23: For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
24: God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
25: Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
26: And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
27: That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
28: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
29: Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.
30: And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:
31: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.
32: And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.
33: So Paul departed from among them.
34: Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

In fact, Paul won very few of the Greeks that day, but it was better to win a few God’s way than to win many by coercion or force. Paul rebuked them, but he did not berate them or show them how “righteous” he was; instead, he met them at their own religious and intellectual level, which is what I believe he meant by becoming all things to all men in order to save some.

Next time, I will talk about how I became guilty of zealotry as a new Messianic Jew, and how this sin was crippling my own walk with God as well as my spiritual attractiveness to my husband. I thank God that during this season of repentance and atonement for sin, God is showing me what I was doing wrong in the area of zealotry, and He is teaching me how to correct my ways in order to draw more people to Himself through me.

Queen Esther Syndrome: I and others like me are suffering from a little-known spiritual condition called Queen Esther syndrome. It is extremely rare, only affecting believing Jewish women who are married to unbelieving husbands. The symptoms of this condition are varied, but they include tired arms and shoulders caused by daily balancing acts whereby the moral and ethical values of two different worlds--heavenly and earthly--are weighed in an attempt to choose between two or more possible courses of action. Headaches and heartaches are also quite prevalent, as these women must simultaneously be subject to their own husbands (worldly mindset) and to God (heavenly mindset). On the one hand, these women must not compromise their own beliefs and betray their Master; on the other hand, in their zeal to be a good daughter of the Master, they run the risk of defying their own husbands, thus potentially alienating them from God and being partly responsible for their husbands’ failure to come to faith, as we read in 1Peter 3:1:

Likewise, ye wives, [be] in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives.

These women know all too well that their husbands are watching them overtly and covertly everyday, trying to examine who these women of faith really are and to see if they are genuine or counterfeit, thereby deciding whether God is genuine or counterfeit.

Here is some background on the historical Queen Esther. Esther was a Jewish woman whose Jewish name was Hadassah. She lived in a gentile world and was married to a gentile king, Ahasuerus. Her uncle Mordechai instructed her to keep her Jewish identity a secret, and she complied. Was this an immoral compromise on her part, or was this a wise thing to do under the circumstances? At the time, I wonder what she felt: did she feel that it was wrong to deny who she was and pretend to be something she was not, or did she have faith that God placed her in this gentile world for a purpose that she did not yet comprehend? Did she feel that her presence would have a positive influence on those around her, even if they did not fully know who she was?

When I think of Esther, I think of a Jewish woman who was made to straddle two worlds (Caesar’s world and God’s world, a Jewish world and a gentile world....sacred and secular, holy and pagan) and yet not become bound up in that realm of which she was not truly a part. In other words, she was used as God’s agent, being sent into a foreign (gentile) kingdom, but she still belonged to God and was sent to do His purpose; she did not become entangled in those areas she was called upon to engage in. Paul experienced this when he became the Jewish apostle to the gentiles:

And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all [men], that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof with [you].

And yet, didn’t Paul say, “I am verily a man [which am] a Jew”? So how is it that he on the one hand says he is a Jew, and yet on the other hand he became as a Jew? This tension is played out in Esther’s life as well. In the realm of the gentile world, as “Esther the gentile,” she had to become as a Jew when operating in the realm of the Jews (i.e., her family). In the realm of the Jewish world, as “Hadassah the Jew,” once she revealed her true identity at the end of the book of Esther, she became as a gentile when in the royal court, because she remained married to her gentile husband, King Ahasuerus. This point is driven home for me by the fact that she did not change her name to “Queen Hadassah” even after her true identity was revealed.

Here’s the part I’m interested in: How does one operate on a daily basis being a Jewish woman living in a gentile world with a gentile (or gentile-acting) husband? One may recall that Esther replaced Queen Vashti because the first queen would not submit to her own husband, refusing to come to the king’s banquet and publicly embarrassing the king in front of his royal court. Esther was a superior example of a wife because she was not only lovely on the outside, but lovely on the inside. She was greatly prized in God’s eyes, an example of the kind of woman the apostle Peter writes about:

Likewise, ye wives, [be] in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;... Whose adorning let it not be that outward [adorning] of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But [let it be] the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, [even the ornament] of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.

Queen Esther is the model for all believing wives living as gentiles (but not being gentiles) by virtue of their being in subjection to their husbands who “obey not the word.” Can women like me pay Caesar’s things unto Caesar and God’s things to God without becoming spiritually compromised? Can women like me disguise their true identities in certain situations for a greater good, such as the ultimate salvation of those around them? Can we straddle two worlds without stumbling? I believe the key to learning how to handle spiritually difficult situations is twofold: First, one must analyze whose face (Caesar’s or God’s) is stamped on the situation; second, one must make sure that, especially in morally gray areas, one does not sacrifice another person’s salvation for the sake of adhering to this or that particular point in the law. This is the epitome of pharisaism:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier [matters] of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. [Ye] blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

A believing Jewish person--especially a believing Jewish wife--living as a gentile in a gentile world is continually challenged to do good works and make proper choices while at the same time not becoming a spiritual stumbling block to others. If we strain at the gnats of every good and proper deed without any sense of the emotional and spiritual condition of the unsaved around us, we run the risk of swallowing a camel-sized portion of guilt and accountability in the world to come. Therefore, there are certain situations in life where the Hadassahs of this world are called to put aside their identities and wear Queen Esther’s crown. These are the times where we can do more ultimate good in the gentile world in the role of Esther than in the role of Hadassah. And yet, Hadassah always remains our true name.

In the world, but not of the world: The most unlikely of Bible passages came to me this morning while I was nursing my infant son. As with so many other verses in the Bible, this is one that I have probably read hundreds of times, but failed to reap any hidden meaning from; that is because my heart was not ready to receive deeper meaning from the Holy Spirit. I believe that God primes us to receive His truths, but doesn’t give them to us until we are ready; part of being ready is having gone through a series of experiences designed to teach us and mold us into His image. These are lessons that must be experienced through everyday events, not ones that can be gleaned from reading or some other objective way. We must experience life lessons on every level: sight, taste, touch, smell, hearing, emotion, spirit. Once we are thus primed, God will help us recollect a seemingly innocuous passage from the Scriptures and suddenly fill the passage with new meaning that speaks to the experiences we have just gone through or are still going through.

The passage is this:

Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?
But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, [ye] hypocrites?
Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny
And he saith unto them, Whose [is] this image and superscription?
They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

Sounds straightforward enough: God is telling people to pay their taxes and to submit themselves to whatever worldly government they are under. Let’s look further and deeper into this. When he begins to answer the question, He answers the pharisees’ question with a question: Whose image and superscription appear on the penny? We already know Jesus’s views on money. The apostles Paul and Peter each referred to money as “filthy lucre.” As Jesus’s disciples, they were teaching what they heard from the Master. The Master in another gospel passage referred to money as “unrighteous mammon,” and made a distinction between what is true and permanent (heavenly riches) versus what is phony, defiled, and temporary (unrighteous mammon):

If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true [riches]?
And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?
No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

And yet, in both passages, Jesus tells us to get our hands dirty in this unrighteous stuff. Why? Because it has the “image” of the world stamped on it. On the contrary, whatever has the image of God stamped on it, that we are to give back to God via our service, our offerings, our time, our effort, our thought processes....what emanates from God and has His image needs to flow back to God in a continuous stream. Because we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, how is it He allows us to become entangled in the world and get our hands dirty with those things that bear the mark and seal of the world? Jesus tells us:

I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.
They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world[and]

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

As sojourners in this world that we are in but not of, we are debtors to two different sets of things: again, one set of things has the image of this world stamped on it; the other set of things has God’s image stamped on it. Even as we are involved in the set of things that do not bear God’s image, we are not to join ourselves to those things or serve them, but simply to pay back what is due. At the same time, we are to be as children of light in a dark place, conducting ourselves in such a manner than nobody can accuse us of wrongdoing by any set of earthly standards. In contrast, as we become involved in those things that bear God’s stamp on them, we are to become immersed in those things because they are from God and of God.

I’m beginning to see how this fits in with my life and the dilemmas that face me everyday as a believer living with a man who is not yet a believer, and how I am constantly shifting gears between the realm of the world and the realm of God, which by necessity forces me to make choices that to the best of my ability line up with what God’s will is for me in my life.

For one thing, I ask myself what things around me are like little coins that bear the “image” of God on them? I see each of my children as little “God coins,” as well as my husband and the home that God has entrusted me to manage. All my neighbors are “God coins” as well, and so are the members of my congregation. The food that we eat, the clothes on our backs, what money there is in our bank accounts to pay the bills that come due every month, my husband’s job, our health....all of these things are gifts of God. What happens when we take a gift of God and return it to the world? Then we are paying God’s things to caesar. Conversely, if we take a worldly gift and try to pay God with it, are we not also in error?

It we misuse and mistreat the people and things that God gave to us to use to His glory, treating them in accordance with the world's opinions at to how they should be treated or used, are we not giving God's things to caesar? On the other hand, if we take things of the world and pass them off as godly and holy, or we try to worship God or further religion with ill-gotten or ill-contrived things or ideas, are we not giving caesar's things to God?

Shabbat, the work week, and life: I was rushing around a few Fridays ago, doing dishes, last-minute laundry, cooking, cleaning, shopping, watering the garden---anything and everything that needed to be done before sundown, just as I have done every Friday since deciding that God's laws do not change, and the 7th day Shabbat was never changed to the 1st day Shabbat, at least not biblically. I have been following God's program for many years now, but I never really "got it." I just decided that if God said it, I will do it, even if I don't understand why. I think that by obeying first, and experiencing what God wants us to do without understanding the purpose ahead of time, God allows us to form an independent understanding of the hidden spiritual meaning behind the act itself. Sometimes this understanding comes years later; for some, maybe it even takes a lifetime.

Anyway, I'm standing by the sink, contemplating how rushed I am and how wonderful it will feel once I can actually just sit down and not have to worry about the dishes or cooking or anything like that. I was sweating and harried, but at the same time I was thinking that in just a few short hours, I'll be able to just do "nothing." Then it suddenly hit me. I thought, this must be what it must feel like in the last decade of one's life. I remember how my mother said that the older we get, the faster the years seem to go by, because each year is a fraction of one's life. So, if you are 10, a year is 1/10 of your whole life (which is quite a lot), but if you are 34 like I am, a year is 1/34 of your life, which isn't all that much. Now imagine that you are 75 and a year is 1/75 of your life. Next, imagine that there are all sorts of things you still want to do and places you still want to see, things you want to tell people, amends you want to make, family you want to leave an imprint on....the years are ticking by now at a minimum of 1/75 of your life and you don't have much time before you die. On the outside you might be okay, but on the inside you are in a state of acceleration. If you know you will see your Creator when you die and will have eternal life, at least you aren't anxious about that. But let's say you believe that this life is all there is and then you simply rot in the ground. Time is really of the essence then. You have to get it all done before you die, plain and simple.

Getting back to this notion, though, that the "Friday" of our lives is the last decade or so before death, that means Shabbat is like death--but for believers it is the death that is a gateway to the world to come. We are given two concrete reasons in the Bible why God wants us to observe the Shabbat. The first is that God rested on the seventh day and was refreshed; likewise, He wants us to rest and be refreshed on the seventh day, first of all to commemorate the Creation, and second of all to mimic God's behavior (that is, if He rested then we should rest, too). The second and lesser known historical reason for resting on the seventh day is that we are to remember that we as Jews (remember, we are to consider the historical experience of the Jews as having happened to us individually according to the Bible) were once slaves in Egypt, but God liberated us with an outstretched arm and a mighty hand. This ties in with why we are not to do any work on the Shabbat. When we were in Egypt, we were forced to work by vicious taskmasters and made into slaves. When we were made free, our hard bondage was over; thus, by not working on Shabbat we are thanking God for making us free, and spiritually we can recline, as in the Passover seder.

There is a lesser-known meaning of Shabbat, and it ties into mystical aspects: Death and Yeshua, and therefore death in Yeshua. Let me explain. As I just mentioned, I began to feel that the acceleration we experience at the end of the week is a precursor to the relaxation we feel in death, because we can finally, as the old Gospel song says, "lay our burdens down." When we are dead, there is nothing left for us to do or work toward, and we can rest on our accomplishments in life. We can cast our cares at His feet, along with our golden crowns. The metaphors are endless. The point is, there is a reason why the term "eternal rest" is used to refer to death. Now let's go back to Shabbat. The word "Shabbat" literally means "rest." Not an accident. How is the "rest" of Shabbat related to the "rest" of death?

In Luke 6:5, Yeshua proclaims "That the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath." In Matthew 11:29-30, Yeshua also said, "Come unto me, all [ye] that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke [is] easy, and my burden is light." So, Yeshua is the Lord of the Shabbat, and in Him we shall find rest for our souls. When we are saved, we literally die to ourselves and are in Him, so in one sense, we are living in a "Shabbat state" for the rest of our natural lives: Col 3:3 says "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." This is obviously not a physical "death," but a dying to sin and living in the newness of the Spirit. Yet, the physical act of dying is another passing from the world and the cares of it, into a world of rest and a place where we can cast our burdens down. Therefore, from birth to death we experience the first 6 days of the week, but when we die we are in the seventh day.

Then I thought that our adult lives can be subdivided by the six days of the week. In other words, if the 6th day (Friday) corresponds to the last decade of life (in which we race around trying to get everything done), then Sunday can be ages 20-30, Monday 30-40, Tuesday 40-50, Wednesday 50-60, Thursday 60-70, and Friday 70-80 (of course this is just an example. There was a lady around here who just died at the age of 114!) I know that for me, on Monday I'm not really thinking about the Shabbat or getting ready for it. On Tuesday I'm barely thinking about it. By Wednesday I'm already paying bills and taking out the trash, and I start doing a couple of loads of laundry. By Thursday the pace begins to pick up and I'm doing more laundry and planning meals and running to the supermarket. By Friday, forget about it!

So what I see is that, when we are in our 20s, we are not thinking about death at all. We are busy meeting people and dating, going to school, and so on. Maybe we even get married in our 20s, and some of us even begin to start our families. We are in full bloom and life is an endless road ahead of us. Death couldn't be further from our minds. We look our best and feel our best, and nothing seems impossible for us. As we move further and further into the "weekdays" of our lives, death looms closer and the prospect of dying becomes a greater reality. Suddenly we know people our age who are dying or have died. Suddenly our "babies" are adults. All of a sudden we have gray hair and flab all over, and we don't move around as easily as we used to. Things seem more imminent. We try to find lost friends and we don't hold grudges quite so easily. Suddenly we find ourselves saying things like, "Well, life is too short to...(whatever)."

I am living in "Monday" right now, but as I look ahead at the work week, I can see how proper planning can make the Friday of my life not quite so frazzled and urgent. Perhaps if I keep on top of my "dirty laundry" and "trash," and if I remember to pay my "bills" on time and keep enough "food" in the house...perhaps if I do the things I need to do when I need to do them and not put them off for another day, I will not enter into the Friday of my life full of unfinished business, regrets, and the dread of too much accountability before God.

Blogging had better not be addictive.

What is the point of blogging? This is my first foray into this world, but I would have to say that for me, it is a desire to share thoughts and information to anyone interested. It is also a way to connect to people in a world where we are feeling more and more disconnected. It's like the Pink Floyd song that asks, "Hello (hello...hello... hello...) Is there anybody out there?" I know that this blog will not get many readers, but that's okay. If there is one reader anywhere in the world that understands what I'm trying to say, or if there is one person out there--anywhere--who is helped by whatever information I post or tidbit I share, then it will be worth it for me to have posted these ramblings. Perhaps the drive to post this particular type of blog is a subconscious desire not only to be understood, but to be a kind of silent hero to someone...to have made a difference in someone else's life without ever knowing it or ever being praised for it. We are always hearing about visible heroes, but I know there are all kinds of heros. Maybe everyone wants to be somebody's hero on some level, to feel needed, or to feel like it was good that they were born. Does this sound too much like It's a Wonderful Life? Maybe, but that's okay. I'm giving myself permission to be sentimental and even a little cheesy. That's probably why I can't stop watching So This is Love.

Emperor Wang Guhn and God: I never really fully comprehended what kingship meant, or a kingdom, or loyalty to a king--concepts played out everywhere in the Bible--or anything of that nature until watching Emperor Wang Guhn. Living in 2002 in a democratic country, how could I really know what it would be like to be a king's subject? This show demonstrates the poignant beauty of love for a king that is true even to death. Wang Guhn's men willingly lay down their lives for him. They serve him in every capacity. They comfort him when he is distressed. They look out for his best interest. They trust in his righteousness and compassion, but they have a healthy fear of him, knowing that even though he loves mercy, he will use his power to exact judgment when necessary. He, in turn, serves his country and his people selflessly, even though he is king. He has power, but he lays it down through self-sacrifice, spending every waking moment watching over his people and even going out in person to fight in battle, even though he doesn't have to.

The "righteous king" theme of this show has inadvertently given me a greater appreciation of God and how God is King, and how God behaves toward us, and how we should be behaving toward him. It also helps me to understand what all this talk is about "the kingdom of God" and how it is not of this world, and how we should be looking forward to this kingdom on earth. I think about how many things in this life will change when God's kingdom is realized, but I also wonder how many people understand what a "kingdom" really is, never having lived in an earthly kingdom as a subject of an earthly king. Will people truly know how to behave? I think God will have to show us how to behave.

Yeshua teaches us that we must overcome the world, and that anyone who puts his hand to the plow and looks back, is not fit for the kingdom. All throughout the Bible, the theme I see over and over again is that we must be loyal to God (of which obedience is just a subset), believe in Him, and believe His prophets. This is the sum total of what I see as the criteria for entrance into the kingdom. If we think of an earthly king and kingdom, obviously enemies of the king don't get to live in his kingdom. But then there are those who are citizens, but traitors. These get death. Some live in the kingdom in obscurity, never giving any glory to the king, but never giving him any trouble either. Their reward is citizenship and the king's protection, and that's about it. Those who are more intimate with the king, in the sense of being bonded or spiritually and emotionally connected, are the heros. These are those who lay down their lives for the king and are given high merits in the kingdom, sometimes posthumously.

When Wang Guhn's army of about 10,000 were ambushed by Bekjae in Mt. Gong, one of the king's four brothers--Shin Seungkyum--disguised himself as Emperor Wang Guhn because he knew that the other army wanted to capture the emperor and cut off his head, thus proclaiming victory and mastery of the three unified kingdoms. So Seungkyum disguised himself as the emperor so the emperor could escape and preserve the kingdom. Greater love hath no man that he who will lay down his life for his friend. Yeshua laid down his life for us, but how willing would we be, as His royal subjects (because the kingdom of God is within us as well), to lay our lives down for Him if that were required of us? I ask myself this a lot. I believe that I would be able to lay down my life if the alternative were renouncing my faith in and allegiance to the King. Even if believers aren't called to be martyred and live a full life on this earth, I think that all believers should be willing to at least consider that they may be called to give their own lives at some point, and if they are not willing to put their hand to that plow, then they should reexamine their faith.

As my first entry, it seems fitting that I should write down the things I'm interested and involved in, and then go from there. This will serve as a reference point for all future posts. Then at some point, I'd like to talk about why I felt the need to create this blog in the first place. Perhaps the urge is a universal one; perhaps it is different for each person. Whoever reads this will know which of these two is true. Maybe both are true. As I'm getting my thoughts together, it occurs to me that my seemingly diverse interests and activities all have some kind of remote thread that binds them together. If one were to list them on paper, they would seem like an odd assortment, but not so. I guess everything we do in life affects everything else we do, sometimes in obvious ways, and somtimes not.

Korean drama: Right now I'm heavily into two Korean dramas that come on late on WYBE. The first is Emperor Wang Guhn, which chronicles the unification of the three kingdoms in Korea (Shilla, Bekjae, and Koryo) into one country (Korea). It is set in the 900s and is riveting, despite the occasional bad acting or editing. The cinematography and costumes are really great, and it's just a hard show to stop watching. The other show is called So This is Love, which is just a cheesy Korean soap opera that comes on right after Wang Guhn. It's funny and super sentimental, but I'm hooked, what can I say? After watching these two shows for months, I've noticed that I'm making an eating a lot of Korean food lately, which is kind of weird, like I'm morphing into the characters I keep watching every day. Maybe it's just as simple as I like the food, and the shows have reminded me that I like the food. I make kosher versions of Korean food, but that's another story too. Oh, and the other story is that my best friend in high school was and is Korean, and because I have lost touch with her and haven't talked to her in 6 years, maybe the shows fill a void in my life since losing my best friend. I still don't know how or why we lost touch with each other. I'm still trying to find her.

The austism-vaccination connection: My second son was diagnosed with autism about 6 years ago. I believe that vaccines had something to do with his brain injury. If anyone is interested, please check out www.909shot.com and also www.freeyurko.bizland.com. I'm in contact with Alan Yurko, who is serving a life sentence for a crime he did not commit. If you write to him, he will return your letter. He's incredibly knowledgable and a nice guy, too.

The Bible: The closest approximation to what I "am" religion-wise is "Messianic Jewish," but I'm not crazy about labels, because they invoke all kinds of other unwanted thoughts and feelings that one is not necessarily associated with. These days I prefer to just say that I'm Jewish and I believe in the whole Bible. I try to observe and keep the commandments written in the first five books of the Bible (the written Torah), and I believe that Yeshua (Jesus) was and is the Messiah. The rest of what I believe is just commentary.

My garden: My garden took a serious blow this summer. We got a few tomatoes and cayenne peppers (which I want to dry and grind up in order to make cabbage kimchee), and some swiss chard, but mostly it was a complete loss. My lawn is dead except for the few places around the driveway where my autistic son likes to dump buckets of water on his head. So I have a brown lawn except for a green "landing strip." These green patches mark the evenings where my son got on his pajamas and asked me if he could play with the hose. I wasn't completely sure if I would be reported by a neighbor or fined by the township for wasting water, but I said yes anyway. He had so much fun doing this that I couldn't say no.

So life began in a garden, my garden grew cayenne peppers, my garden grew cayenne peppers despite the drought and water restrictions, my austic son watered parts of my lawn on the sly, I'm going to use cayenne peppers to make kimchee, I'm going to eat kimchee while watching my Korean dramas....yes, all of what we do is somehow connected if only we take the time to figure out what these connections are.