Tag Archives: Prophecy

July 14, 2013 · 9:46 am

Inside Israel

Once again, it’s time to hear from our sister in Jerusalem about what she is witnessing there as a believer in Yeshua. Put your prayer shawls on and pray for Israel and Sister J. Now here she is …

What are your thoughts occupied with as we heard toward tisha b’av next Monday night and Tuesday? I’ve been thinking about those little mistakes in communication that snowball into huge conflicts between people and communities. The children that grow up estranged because their parents were too busy to say “I love you.” The couples that stopped listening to each other because they didn’t understand each other. The religious sectors that split apart because they never took the opportunity to learn to value each other.

When we talk about Sinat Chinam (baseless hatred) in Israel, it’s important to realize that so many of our fights can be avoided if we take the time to maintain the relationships we have, and fill them with love and beauty instead of jealousy and suspicion. If we can do that as a nation, we’ll never have to fast on tisha b’av again.

Wishing you an easy and meaningful fast.” (from the local ‘janglo’ weekly letter)

Greetings and Blessings, dear sisters and brothers, May The Lord be glorified, blessed, worshipped… may you be blessed!

As ramadan is being observed by the world’s Moslems, the tisha b’av fast appears on the horizon. Tisha b’av (or 9^th day of the month of Av on the Hebrew calendar) is observed this year beginning Monday night the 8^th through Tues sundown the 9^th. Aside from the fast day of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, this is the most solemn fast day of the Jewish year. It is not observed as widely as Yom Kippur (which is commanded in scripture and actively observed by a large majority of Jews) but it IS observed by a surprising number of even secular or nominally observant Jews as well as the religious.

As I have told you recently, I have been going through this interesting season of having my morning devotional reading ‘disrupted by The Lord’ after 37 years of following His initial directions to me, and have been having an intense time reading and re-reading the major prophets again and again (along with other portions in New Covenant and Psalms), so this day is making a very present and living impression on me this year, even more so then in past years.

The 9^th of Av commemorates the actual date of the destruction of BOTH the first and second temples and the punishment of the surviving remnant being sent out of the promised land of Israel into the diaspora. You can read Jeremiah’s account of the date in Jeremiah 52:6-7 –

6 By the fourth month, on the ninth day of the month, the famine had become so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land.

7 Then the city wall was broken through, and all the men of war fled and went out of the city at night by way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king’s garden, even though the Chaldeans were near the city all around. And they went by way of the plain.

I have also shared many times over the past years lists of the unusual number of cataclysmic events that have taken place among the Jews through out modern history on this same date.

People prepare for this time of often very real repentance and heart searching in many ways. The very religious men do not shave or cut their hair from Shavuot until tisha b’av, so there are many fully bearded men around right now. There is also a general feeling of mourning in the air and I have heard many greetings which include a blessing for Jerusalem. The teaching is that the judgment of God comes upon the people of Israel mainly for ‘brother hating brother’ (sinat chinam, in Hebrew). Of course this is partly true according to the scriptures as hatred, or lack of love, produces selfishness, oppressing, cheating, theft and the like. But the Scriptures make it clear that there are other reasons for the judgment of God upon the children of Israel: (I have been writing them down during these 6 months of reading through the major prophets). Some of them are:

Forsaking Him (our first love); serving other Gods (like material goods, the flesh, new age ideas…?), worshipping the work of our own hands, giving heed to seducing spirits (counterfeit works of a spirit other then HIS); defiling His land; rebellion; pride; not finding delight in The Word of The Lord; covetousness; dealing falsely; will not hear correction; following the dictates of our own heart; forsaking Shabat; following Eastern ways; arrogant tongue; despising this inherited land; lack of mercy…oh my, the list goes on.

At the top of this letter I copied a small paragraph that opened a local weekly email information site, and similar exhortations and encouragements are appearing in newspapers, in short messages on radio and tv and on billboards (at least in the Jerusalem area). ‘Prepare your heart to seek The Lord…do not let Jerusalem go again…’

I was in the Old City on Tuesday and many large groups of youngsters, soldiers and older folks as well, were on ‘learning tours’, reviewing the history surrounding the destructions of the temples. They stop to read scripture and pray. On tisha b’av itself, the book of Lamentations is prayed/read during the fast and many people stay up all night weeping and even dressing in sackcloth and ashes. We can scoff at what is ‘religious show’, but I, for one, know that God hears hungry hearts and my prayer is that this will NOT be a religious tradition, but that there will be breakthroughs in hearts; that The Holy Spirit will convict, and draw the hungry to Yeshua, Whom He is well able to reveal! AND… that He will indeed, CREATE hunger in the hearts of those who may be crying out of tradition only. He is able.

I have not been well, so will close and go to bed now. What a season we live in, eh? His ways are so above our ways and His thoughts so above our…and I am thankful for that! I send you much love. God bless you and keep you and make HIS FACE to shine upon you…and give you (HIS) Shalom.

Lovingly,

your sis J

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July 8, 2013 · 3:51 pm

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet So Hard To Do (Part 6)

One morning the plates and cups and bowls on the table were empty. There was no food in the larder, and no money to buy food. The thirty children were standing, waiting for their morning meal, when George Mueller said, “Children, you know we must be in time for school.”

Lifting his hand he said, “Dear Father, we thank Thee for what Thou art going to give us to eat.”

There was a knock on the door. The baker stood there, and said, “Mr. Mueller, I couldn’t sleep last night. Somehow I felt you didn’t have bread for breakfast and the Lord wanted me to send you some. So I got up at 2 a.m. and baked some fresh bread, and have brought it.”

Mueller thanked the man.

No sooner had this transpired than there was a second knock at the door. It was the milkman. He announced that his milk cart had broken down right in front of the Orphanage, and he would like to give the children his cans of fresh milk so he could empty his wagon and repair it.

(Life and Ministry of George Mueller by Ed Reese, Reese Publictions, Christian Hall of Fame Series)

George Mueller (1805 – 1898) pastored the same Baptist church in Bristol, England, for over sixty-six years. Yet, he is best known for his orphan ministry, with stories like the above being common in his life. His orphanages cared for over 10,000 orphans at a time when destitute children were locked up in prisons to keep them off the streets.

Armed only with prayer and faith, he went through daily spiritual battles to provide for the increasing number of orphans under his care. He admitted his faith was nothing special and any believer could do it. What he did was simple enough in that he meditated in scriptures and then prayed the promises before God’s throne. He continued praying until He had peace about his prayers being answered by God.

God never failed him.

Near the end of his life, Mueller stated he had received over 50,000 answers to specific prayers from God. The amazing thing is that George Mueller never once asked people for money. Never once. Every prayer request was made alone before God.

Thousands of believers have been encouraged by the many books on George Mueller’s life. We’ll talk about one of them next time.

(Continued in Part 7)

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July 3, 2013 · 10:19 am

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet so Tough To Do (Part 5)

Successful prayer depends on our relationship with the Father and little else. The following story, as related by Rev. Kenneth Hagin on one of his radio programs, demonstrates well this principle:

In the 1850’s, a slave woman watched in agony as her husband was led to the auction block. She knew her husband would be sold to another plantation and they would never see each other again. Life without him would be horrible, she thought.

As she stood there, in her hopelessness, wondering what she could do, she looked up toward heaven. “Lord, if I could help You right now as easily as You can help me, I would,” she prayed in a soft whisper.

As the slave husband slowly trudged up to the auctioneer, a young boy in the audience turned to his father. “Dad, could I have ten dollars to buy a slave?” he asked.

“Sure, son,” said his father, knowing that each slave would sell for hundreds of dollars. He handed his son the money.

“Let’s begin the bidding on this young, strong slave,” said the auctioneer. “Who’ll start it off?”

The young boy raised his hand. “I’ll bid ten dollars,” he said in a loud voice.

The crowd turned to look at the young boy and laughed in unison at the ridiculousness of the boy’s bid. Each shook his head, and yet, there were no other bids. The boy purchased the slave husband for ten dollars

Afterward, the young boy walked to the cashier, paid his money, signed the papers, and took possession of his slave.

Then, he took the slave husband over to the wife. “Here, you can have him. He’s yours,” he said to her.

…For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you. (Matthew 17:20)

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June 26, 2013 · 4:05 pm

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet So Tough To Do (Part 4)

I was so hungry for a Bible. Seeing my desperation, my mother remembered an old man in another village. This man had been a pastor before the Cultural Revolution.

Together we started out on the long walk to his home. When we found him, we told him our desire, “We long to see a Bible. Do you have one?”

The old pastor simply told me, “The Bible is a heavenly book. If you want one, you’ll need to pray to the God of heaven. Only He can provide a heavenly book…”

When I returned home, I brought a stone into my room and knelt on it every evening for prayer. I just had one simple prayer, “Lord, please give me a Bible. Amen.”

Nothing happened. A Bible didn’t appear.

I went back to that pastor’s house again. I told him, “I’ve prayed to God according to your instructions, but I still haven’t received the Bible I want so much. Please, please show me your Bible. Just a glance and I will be satisfied. I don’t need to touch it. You hold it and I will be content to just look at it…”

The pastor saw the anxiety in my heart. He spoke to me again, “If you’re serious, you should not only kneel down and pray to the Lord, you should also fast and weep. The more you weep, the sooner you get your Bible.”

I went home, and every morning and afternoon I ate and drank nothing. Every evening I ate just one small bowl of steamed rice. I cried like a hungry child to his heavenly Father, wanting to be filled with His word. For the next one hundred days, I prayed for a Bible, until I could bear it no more. My parents were sure I was losing my mind.

Looking back years later, I would say this whole experience was the most difficult thing I’ve ever endured.

Then, suddenly one morning at 4 AM, after months of begging God to answer my prayers, I received a vision from the Lord while kneeling beside my bed.

Later…

I quickly opened the door and there standing before were the same two servants I had seen in my vision. One man held a red bag in his hand. My heart raced as I opened the bag and held in my hands my very own Bible. (The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun, by Brother Yun and Paul Hattaway, 2003, Piquant Publishing, pages 27 – 30)

The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. (James 5:16)

(Continued in Part 5)

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June 23, 2013 · 8:55 am

Inside Israel

He is precious and to be glorified and blessed, and as His Blood-bought body, how very precious are each of you! … for you are the temple of the living God; as God has said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…” (2 Corin 6:16) WOW! May you be blessed and encouraged, as I am today with a fresh ‘glimpse’ of the fact that He is ‘enough’…He is ALL!

I had to giggle as I watched the news brief last night. In very serious tones it was reported that a ‘caucus’ on the USA has been formed in our Knesset (Parliament – Congress) to ‘study and teach about the United States, it’s government system, history, geography, social systems and culture.’ I always wondered what a ‘caucus’ was but had never pursued it.

In this case I understood it to be a committee formed to study the USA and report back and teach the other Knesset members. They all looked so serious as they sat around learning like students in a 6^th grade class, absorbing new information and ideas. The reporter explained that everyone thought there already HAD been such a thing for years, but there hasn’t been, and it was high time that we began to understand ‘where America was coming from’.

Of course, as a ‘former American’ this seemed funny to me…studying American culture in particular …but then I realized that it isn’t. As I wrote in my last email, we are still a third world country dressed up as a first world one. But we are a third world country with a passion for learning and searching out truth (yea!) and I suspect that our policy makers are puzzled at America’s approach to dealing with the current problems in the Middle East. This has been brought to a head by the situation in Syria and the current ‘policy’ to ‘arm the rebels’. Everyone here is scratching their heads and so our politicians are now going to study ‘what makes them tick over there?’ Perhaps someone would find this food for prayer.

I want to thank you for your prayers for me personally. I am walking free in Yeshua today by the power of The Blood and The Spirit, thanks to the help of a dear sister whom He used to pray with me. How thankful I am for people who pay the price to be spot on (silver bullet prayers I call it…if any of you remember the Lone Ranger) through obedience on their knees. I see now more clearly how to stand against the occasion that the enemy took to chain me up through the stress that The Lord is exercising me with these days. I am truly flooded with joy, peace AND better health today, in spite of the fact that the stress remains and increases. He is so very good! I love the way He uses His body as we walk according to His ways.

I find that I have less and less opportunities on the bus and train these days to talk with people, as iphones and ipods have literally taken over. Everybody seems to be plugged in and fewer people are talking…or even looking up :-\ in this electronic age. At work today, however, I had an encounter that perhaps contains a window that is both common to all man and also unique in some ways.

The part of my job that I dislike the most concerns a list that we receive every 3 months from the health fund. The job falls to me to call some 80 or so patients who received services during the past quarter but did not pass their plastic card. (the Doctor gets paid by the card being passed) Now…this entails me disturbing people who may live cross town and to explain to them as patiently as I can in my best Hebrew that, yes they DID order something and that even if they DIDN’T pick it up, we DID do the work, print it out, etc, and that it is all recorded in the perfectly accurate computer (‘No…It didn’t make a mistake…no…I am not lying…No…it was really you…’) and that even though it is inconvenient for them to travel across town, wouldn’t it be nice to pay the doctor (since it isn’t from their pocket anyway).

Sometimes people argue and yell at me and I find that the most distressing part of my work. This month I approached it with a good and cheerful attitude…until I came to Shlomo Alkalai! I LIKE Shlomo. He is a gentle man of about 60 who has had a really tough time. I called him and asked him to please bring in his card. I was totally unprepared for the abusive yelling that followed. I finally said ‘Shlomo…I won’t listen to this. I am hanging up the phone’ which I did, and promptly folded my list and stuffed it into a corner, heart pounding in my ears. ‘That’s it for phone calls. I’m NOT up to this!’ I decided. That was last week.

Just as I was getting ready to leave today Shlomo appeared at the door with his card. Again he began to yell at me and I simply didn’t answer him. I didn’t even look at him. This was hard as I always liked Shlomo and he always liked me…what had happened? Dr. Meshulam appeared and told him to stop yelling at the secretary ‘Zeh lo na’aim!’ (literally ‘that is not nice’) he said sternly. Shlomo yelled ‘I am NOT yelling’. We looked at each other and he began to share with me some things that I already knew, and others that I didn’t. Shlomo is (I think) an accountant. He is a kind and gentle man but his wife, Ruthie, suffers for many years from extreme depression for which she has been hospitalized often and remains heavily medicated. Then she passed through several severe bouts of cancer requiring chemo and radiation that affected her legs (how they don’t know) and she is now in a wheel chair as well. She has gained about 100 pounds during this time. They have one lovely daughter who has succeeded in becoming a lawyer in the midst of all of this. She lives in Tel Aviv.

Shlomo has had to move his office into his home since Ruthie must be watched 24 hours a day. Their daughter, who works until 8 at night comes home once a week, cooks all night and spends the night so that Shlomo can go out the next day (one day a week) to buy groceries, run errands (like this one that I was imposing on him), pay bills etc. The bills have piled up and as I listened the tears began to roll down my face. I was thinking what a burden it was for him to have to come across town to run his card through. We spoke at great length, both apologizing, of course. I kept praying for access to The Holy Spirit to speak words of encouragement, but as the words kept pouring out of him I realized that what he needed to do he was doing.

Sometimes when we go through too much ‘trauma’ in our life, we sort of have to ‘recite’ it to ‘validate’ that all of this is really happening. I learned that through my own experience, particularly when you are walking a lonely path. All that I could do was listen and trust that as he saw my tears he would receive some comfort.

And now to take him to prayer. He and his family need prayer. I make a distinction between a ‘religious’ man and a ‘God fearing’ man. Here, the ‘religious’ fit certain criteria…dress a certain way, eat a certain way, pray a certain way. Shlomo is a ‘God fearing man’. A man who prays, goes to synagogue, keeps the kosher laws.

Perhaps someone will be given a burden to pray for this family, and that is why I share. I want to thank you for allowing The Lord to lay whomever He does upon your heart. I am always blessed to humility when one of you writes and asks how ‘Molly’ is or tells me that you are praying for ‘Rivka’ or ‘Amos’ or ‘the taxi driver’. It only needs to be one…but whom The Lord burdens, He also empowers. Thank you!

And thank you again for praying for me and my family and for our nation and people. These emails have been a bit anemic lately, and I apologize for that, but I offer it to Him and am thankful for a moment to fellowship with you. I would ask particularly for prayer for our younger daughter and her husband right now. Thank you so much. May we all draw ever closer and ever deeper to His Heart and may we let Him strip away all that hinders, for His kingdom and for His glory,

Lovingly,

your sister J

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June 21, 2013 · 11:07 am

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet So Tough To Do (Part 3)

We arrived at her apartment by night in order to escape detection. We were in Russia (in the region of Lithuania, on the Baltic Sea). Ellen and I had climbed the steep stairs, coming through a small back door into the one-room apartment. It was jammed with furniture, evidence that the old couple had once lived in a much larger and much finer house.

The old woman was lying on a small sofa, propped up by pillows. Her body was bent and twisted almost beyond recognition by the dread disease of multiple sclerosis. Her aged husband spent all his time caring for her since she was unable to move off the sofa.

I walked across the room and kissed her wrinkled cheek. She tried to look up but the muscles in her neck were atrophied so she could only roll her eyes upward and smile. She raised her right hand, slowly, in jerks. It was the only part of her body she could control and with her gnarled and deformed knuckles she caressed my face. I reached over and kissed the index finger of that hand, for it was with this one finger that she had so long glorified God.

Beside her couch was a vintage typewriter. Each morning her faithful husband would rise, praising the Lord. After caring for his wife’s needs and feeding her a simple breakfast, he would prop her into a sitting position on the couch, placing pillows all around her so she wouldn’t topple over. Then he would move that ancient black typewriter in front of her on a small table. From an old cupboard he would remove a stack of cheap yellow paper. Then, with that blessed one finger, she would begin to type.

All day and far into the night she would type. She translated Christian books into Russian, Latvian, and the language of her people. Always using just that one finger—peck… peck… peck—she typed out the pages. Portions of the Bible, the books of Billy Graham, Watchman Nee, and Corrie ten Boom—all came from her typewriter. That was why I was there—to thank her.

“Not only does she translate their books,” her husband said as he hovered close by during our conversation, “but she prays for these men every day while she types. Sometimes it takes a long time for her finger to hit the key, or for her to get the paper in the machine, but all the time she is praying for those whose books she is working on.”

I looked at her wasted form on the sofa, her head pulled down and her feet curled back under her body. “Oh, Lord, why don’t You heal her?” I cried inwardly.

Her husband, sensing my anguish of soul, gave the answer. “God has a purpose in her sickness. Every other Christian in the city is watched by the secret police. But because she has been sick so long, no one ever looks in on her. They leave us alone and she is the only person in all the city who can type quietly, undetected by the police.”

I looked around at the tiny room, so jammed full of furniture from better days. In one corner was the kitchen. Beside the cupboard was her husband’s “office,” a battered desk where he sorted the pages that came from her typewriter to pass them on to the Christians. I thought of Jesus sitting over against the treasury, and my heart leaped for joy as I heard Jesus bless this sick old woman who, like the widow, had given all she had. (Tramp for the Lord by Corrie ten boom, ©1975, 2008, Christian Literature Crusade, excerpt from Chapter 31, “One Finger for His Glory.”)

Corrie ten boom did not mention the name of this sick old woman who prayed all day long as she pecked away on a typewriter. So, we don’t know her name, but I guarantee you this: all of heaven knows her name.

(Continued in Part 4)

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June 19, 2013 · 2:14 pm

Sponsor A Child – Save A Family

Let’s say your spouse dies, what would most likely happen next?

Your family, neighbors, and friends would show up at your home to comfort you. They would bring food. There would be an outpouring of love shown to you through many different ways in the days following the funeral and the months afterward.

But not so, if you are a wife in rural India, especially in Mula’s case.

Mula and her husband loved each other, but he died from cancer after seventeen years of marriage. When that happened, Mula was blamed for her husband’s death, forsaken by both families, shunned by her friends, and despised by her community. She and her four children faced a desperate future.

Fortunately, her oldest daughter attended a Bridge of Hope school. Through this connection with Gospel For Asia, Mula attended a seamstress school and eventually received a sewing machine. She now earns enough through sewing to feed and clothe her family.

The reasons all this happened:

1. Someone sponsored the daughter for $35/month.

2. Someone bought a sewing machine from GFA’s Christmas Catalog for $85.

What may seem like pocket change to the people who sponsored the daughter or who bought the sewing machine, made a life and death difference to Mula and her family. And oh yes! Mula gave her life to Jesus.

Do you have any spare pocket change? It may be enough to sponsor a child, which may end up saving a family.

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June 13, 2013 · 10:33 am

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet So Tough To Do (Part 2)

The vibrant sounds of Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number Seven swirled through the Beacon Hill mansion’s ballroom. The fifteen females seated around the grand piano, listening to the maestro, had proper Brahmin names like Cabot, Coolidge, Forbes, Lodge, and Shaw. Each traced her ancestry back to the earliest Puritan settlers of Boston. This blueblood lineage insured their invitation to the social tea, no nouveau riche Johnny-come-latelies were among the invitees.

When the pianist completed the piece, he stood and bowed. The women showed their appreciation with warm applause. One of the ladies put her white gloved hands to her mouth and said, “Oh, I would just do anything to be able to play the piano like that.”

The maestro turned and stared at her. His eyes exploded with fire.

“No you wouldn’t,” he said.

The crowd collectively gasped. All felt sorry for the woman who had been openly rebuked by the man’s insensitive words.

As for the lady, she sat stunned, paralyzed by his harsh eyes, tears rolled down her cheeks. Then, as if she remembered her privileged pedigree, she mouthed three defiant words at the pianist: “Yes, I would.”

“No you wouldn’t,” he said again, leaning over the piano toward the lady.

“Because if you really meant what you said, you would have been willing to give up your youth, your teenage years, and eight to ten hours every day practicing on the piano. You see there is a price to sit on this bench. I’ve been willing to pay it, and you have not!”

Like playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number Seven, prayer demands an all-effort on our parts if we really want to see God move through our petitions and supplications for our families, friends, neighbors, and cities. How costly will the price eventually be for each of us?

It will cost us everything!

(Continued in Part 3)

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June 8, 2013 · 1:13 pm

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet So Tough To Do (Part 1)

Almost twenty-five years ago, I read an interview of David Yongi Cho in Charisma Magazine which really bummed me out. It was a long interview which dealt with his life and founding of the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, which then had 700,000 members.

What particularly bummed me out was when the interviewer asked: “Will America ever have a church as large as Yoido Full Gospel Church?”

“No,” replied Cho, “because Americans aren’t willing to pay the price in prayer that it takes to build a large church like Yoido.”

Slap! His words felt like a glove slap to my face, challenging me to a duel.

I readily admit to being full of myself at the time because I prayed 3 to 4 hours each day which is what Cho and his 400 elders averaged. So, I thought: “All I need to do is find a few believers like me who enjoy praying and voilà! America will have a large church.”

Well, after journeying over hundreds of miles of life’s back roads and through more than enough deep valleys, I have arrived at this conclusion: Cho was right. America will never have a church like Yoido Full Gospel, which now has over 1 million members.

“What?” you proclaim, picking up your gloves, readying to slap my face. “Do you still believe that the Lord’s house is called to be a house of prayer?

“Yes, I do,” I reply, keeping my eyes on your hands.

“Then what’s your problem?” you say through clenched teeth, still ready to slap me.

I shrug. “It’s a long story. Do you really want to hear it?” I whisper.

So, over the next few weeks, I will write on prayer. Some of the articles will deal with my prayer heroes. Some will deal with the mistakes of different prayer movements. Some will deal with my mistakes and lessons I’ve learned about prayer.

But hopefully, we will all end up trusting and loving the Lord more than we do now.

(Continued in Part 2)

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May 26, 2013 · 6:34 am

Inside Israel – Pentecost (Part 2)

As you have probably guessed by now, I’m not Debbie, but since she’s taken a sabbatical, I will host Inside Israel where we will hear from our sister in Jerusalem about what she is witnessing there as a believer in Yeshua. Put your prayer shawls on and pray for Israel and Sister J. Now here she is …

And, speaking of The Bread, the two challot (‘challa’ is the three twined braided shabat bread) that I am hoping to bring to our gathering tomorrow are rising on my stove. Our fellowship plans to gather together to worship The Lord and bring our own thanksgivings to Him.

Shavuot is actually the 50^th day following Passover (which is why it is called Pentecost in English) during which time the grain harvest is ripening and taking place. We are told in scripture to ‘count the Omer’ (grains of wheat) for 7 weeks of 7 days (49 days) and there is a meditation for each day (again Leviticus 23) and when the time of the grain is full and the grain is full in it’s head, it is really a time to thank God for the new grain harvest – grain being the ‘staff of life’ – and the first fruits of the land as spring and the land is now literally covered with new life!

As the life of the next generation … the seeds… are already amazingly present in each generation…this is evident in all of His creation.

As I walk the several streets from the bus to my work in the morning I have been writing to you in my head. Here it is… May…and yet what strikes me most is that the fall fruits are already alive in their bursting buds! My head spins with this visual example of the ‘cycle of life’ that God has given; beautiful grape vines, clean from the rains, press their paths over gates and hedges and already there are evident miniscule clusters of what will become, Lord willing, lush grapes that won’t ripen until their fullness during the fall feasts of Sukkot. Dazzling my eyes are the florescent pink orange ‘horn’, the dramatic buds of the pomegranate which will signify the fall feasts as well. I see the fig leaves in full fan already being pulled downward by the heavy dates beginning to develop. As if a colorful ‘frame’ around this activity, the bright yellow lemons beg to be picked and the air is permeated…full of the fragrance of more flowers then I could take note of … more colors then my eyes can define… all of this and so much more God has given even to us now in our disobedience!

What awaits us in the fulfillment…! Overhead the swallows (as they are called in America) or swifts (as they are called in Europe) literally darken the morning sky as they feast of the little bugs. I watch them darting around at a speed that boggles my mind and wonder at how they navigate around one another and buildings. It is literally a display of nature that one need only to look up to see. I have had to laugh because as I wait at my bus stop (after getting off the train…) in the morning, it is on a crowded narrow street. The people crowd into the little ‘tachanat’ or ‘waiting station’ and sort of ‘tolerate’ the time. One day the swallows (swifts) were just THICK and I was enraptured looking up and watching them. I took a sudden look around and EVERYONE was gazing up instead of at the ground. That brought a prayer to me ‘Lord! Looking up may we see You! May we FIND You! Look, Lord! We are looking UP!’ He is truly so good!

And as truly as the life of the fall fruits are already growing so wonderfully in the bud as the spring harvest takes place, perhaps…dare I say… that this is true in the Spirit as well as the natural? As Shavuot was given through the hand of Moses…The Holy Spirit came on the self same day through Yeshua h’Meshiach…One God, one seed, one bud, one Fruit…In Him alone is life. Maybe THIS year? Even THIS day?

There is much more to share, but I think that in this letter I don’t want to mix the wonder of the seed of what He does and is doing with more words.

Lovingly, with blessing, your sis

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Filed under Christianity, Church, Gifts of the Spirit, grace, Israel, Jerusalem, Prophecy

Tagged as Christianity, Church, Israel, Jerusalem, Kingdom of God, Prophecy