Rabbi’s Reflections – Saturday, December 7, 2019
Shabbat Shalom *|FNAME|*,
“A date which will live in infamy.” – President Franklin Roosevelt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK8gYGg0dkE
Only 13 shopping days left until Chanukah. The first light is on Sunday night, December 22nd. Please join us at 5pm for the lighting ceremony in the parking lot at Shomair Yisrael, 3811 Boyd’s Bridge Pike. Hot Chocolate, sufganiyot (don’t know what “sufgaiyot” are, Google it by that spelling) and coffee will be served inside.
Our congregational Chanukah party will be held on Saturday, December 28th after the regular Shabbat worship service. I understand Hanukkah Harry will be making the rounds that night. All are invited.
Friday night, December 13th at 6:30pm we are all invited to participate with the Gathering of Nations. We will be bringing them the Jewish part of Christmas. They meet upstairs at East Town Mall across from Belks. More on this later, but please save the date.
Ahhhh Shabbat. I’m meditating on the thought that we are called to a life of Shabbat. Yeshua is the Lord of the Shabbat. (Matthew 12:8 and many other places in Scripture.) Our calling is to rest in Him. The product of repentance and following the Lord is the benefit of Shabbat. Acts 3:19 Repent, therefore, and return—so your sins might be blotted out, 20a so times of relief might come from the presence of Adonai….
“Times of relief” is another way to say Shabbat. The whole world is suffering in anxiety and stress. We are called to a spiritual reality that does not include anxiety and stress.
Rabbi Trail: We used a word when I lived in Texas. The word is “wrecked.” That one word means so much it will take this RT to describe it. Picture a dually-truck pulling a horse trailer with 6 horses in it. The truck swerves off the road and rolls over. The trailer becomes unhitched and rolls several times. The people in the truck are severely injured, but they had seatbelts on and survive. The horses are in very bad shape. Only 2 survive. That scene is a wreck. End RT.
Without the Lord, we are all wrecked. Without the Lord, we are all horses (some of us are the front part of the horse, and some of us are the opposite). Rabbi’s note: Don’t you love it when the rabbi insults you in the nicest and kindest sort of way?
Only in Yeshua can we hope to overcome the challenges and stress of this world. His protecting love is offering us a spiritual Shabbat every day.
Yeshua provides us a spiritual reality that eclipses anything this physical world has to offer. 2 Corinthians 4:16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day. 17 For our trouble, light and momentary, is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.