Rabbi’s Reflections – Friday, June 7, 2024
(Early) Shabbat Shalom,
Day 41 of counting the Omer
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָֽׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו, וְצִוָּֽנוּ עַל סְפִירַת הָעֹֽמֶר
Baruch Atah Adonai Elohenu Melech Ha-Olam, Asher Kid’shanu B’mitzvotav, Vitzivanu Al Sefirat Ha-Omer.
Blessed are You O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us by his commandments and commanded us about the counting of the Omer. Today is five weeks and six days of the counting of the Omer.
Follow up that prayer by remembering a blessing from the Lord and give Him thanks. Psalm 28:7 Adonai is my strength and my shield. My heart trusts in Him, and I was helped. Therefore my heart leaps for joy, and I will praise Him with my song.
Psalms
Psalm 9:14(13) – Part 11
Psalm 9:14(13) Be compassionate to me, Adonai. See my affliction from those hating me. Lift me up from the gates of death.
There is a lot packed into this one verse. First, we are calling on the Lord for “Chen,” a word used more than 80 times to mean mercy and grace. This brings to mind one of my favorite life verses. Feel free to adopt it as one of your own….
Ephesians 3:20 Now to Him who is able to do far beyond all that we ask or imagine, by means of His power that works in us, 21 to Him be the glory in the community of believers and in Messiah Yeshua throughout all generations forever and ever! Amen.
We are asking for God’s unmerited (although love motivated) mercy/grace to deliver us from the affliction of our enemies, from death to life. Let’s look at the context verses before Ephesians 3:20. This is all part of Paul’s prayer (that ends with “Amen.”) He starts verse 16 with “I pray….”
The prayer that follows is beautiful and robust. First, Paul prays for our inner strength through the power of the Holy Spirit. The result (also prayed for) is that Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. So first, let’s receive that. Yeshua said this is the product of our love for Him…. John 14:23 Yeshua answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him.
Then Paul prays for us to be “rooted and grounded” in love, such that we will produce a strength that can hold on to all four dimensions (width and length and height and depth). However; the physical world we live in is only made of three dimensions. That fourth dimension is the spirit world we can’t see and feel physically, but we can experience spiritually.
The result of knowing the love of God in both the physical world and the spiritual world is an experience Paul refers to as a love that “surpasses knowledge.” That means we live beyond our physical frailties through faith in God’s promises, resulting in being “filled up with all the fullness of God.” That’s our victory!
Daily Bread, reading plan by Lars Enarson (https://www.thewatchman.org/)
1 Sivan Friday 7-Jun-24 Rosh Chodesh Sivan 41st day of the Omer
Numbers 3:40-51 Jeremiah 16 Job 27 Mark 5:21-43 1 Corinthians 7:1-24