A Messianic Tribute for National Poetry Month 2013

Please enjoy a special post for National Poetry Month!

What's It To Me?

By Susan Perlman

So enough already, I don't want to hear. They say you've got answers, well, I just don't care.
You talk about love, forgiveness and faith but what have you done to stop all the hate?
What of the sorrow, the pain all around? What have you done to make laughter sound?
What about fighting and wars in your name? Is this what you brought, is this why you came?
You haven't caused change, so why should I pray? You're not for me, I'll go my own way.
I'll find my own answers to suffering and strife, The meaning of death, the value of life.
The rabbis reject you, so why shouldn't I? What's it to me if you lived or died?

untitled

By Carolyn Rohrig

Buddhist temple
no one here
but the flies

Walking Faith

By Arielle Rothbard

Faith is rather a rough concept
When it strains to trickle in your ear
And all that’s needed’s to climb quickly
the hill.
To pop
Your ears
And faith will trickle in,
And will exclude all half-baked foolery:
and there's a lot.
But with right tools you'll find
Few fools have faith sans reason.
They only first must choose to 
Loosen up, skim stones across 
The sea messiah walked
As if were sand, not waves

Choice

By Sheldon Scher

I can choose—
To be relaxed, dormant in thought and deed;
To accept only that which is laid on me:
Like a stone that receives no input, transmits no output
And makes no choice as to the moss on its surface,
I can choose to be oblivious to my environment.
I can choose—
To accept bidding and direction from any dominating force,
And like a piece of driftwood drawn and led by currents and tides,
I can choose not to choose,
But to co-exist with the results of my indecision.
I can choose—
A direction of compassion and loyalty;
To reach for teachings within the scope of my chosen way;
Teachings, however sincere, limited by individual intellect and interpretation.
I can try to adapt to these teachings of man and to learn
From all I choose to read, listen to, and look at.
I can choose—
To be alert, ever seeking new avenues of learning;
Neither to ignore, nor be limited by inherent motivations:
But just as an advancing stream
Absorbs fruition and disperses enriched deposits
In each of the rivulets it forms and explores,
So I can choose to reach beyond the extent of my immediate scope—
To my roots—toward the very heights—to learn and to teach.
I can choose—
To live reflecting the FACETS of my MAKER;
I can choose;
I am chosen;
I am a Jew.

Pray for Israel

A NOTE FROM DAVID BRICKNER

This edition of RealTime comes to you on Yom ha-Azma'ut, Israel's Independence Day (from sundown to sundown, April 15-16). Sixty-five years ago the modern state was born out of the ashes of the Holocaust, a true miracle of God's mercy towards His chosen people. Yet it seems as if just as many if not more people today would welcome the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of the Jewish people.

Thankfully, "He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep" (Psalm 121:4). Nevertheless, the Lord calls on us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6). Since there is no real or lasting peace without Jesus, I pray for the salvation of both Jews and Arabs living in the Land, and I pray for God to strengthen and bless those who already know the Lord. I offer the following prayer points for those of you who might like to pray along with me.

Recent developments provide some hope for Jewish believers who face persecution in Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu has formed a new government with a coalition that excludes Orthodox religious political parties, something that hasn't happened in a very long time. The religious community has consistently discriminated against Messianic Jews and other Christians in the Land of Israel. Let us pray that this new government might be more favorable to believers in the Land and enforce the laws that ban discrimination on religious grounds, while upholding the freedom to proclaim the good news.

Then there is a different sort of persecution that comes from those who are not religious. Recently, the secular Israeli courts ruled against a group of believers in Jesus who live on a moshav near Jerusalem called Yad Hashmona. This group runs a beautiful conference center where they can also host weddings and bar mitzvahs. When they politely informed a same-sex couple that the moshav was a Bible-based community and could not rent the facility for their wedding celebration, the couple sued Yad Hashmona. The believers were fined heavily. As a result they chose (I believe appropriately) to discontinue renting their facility to the public for weddings. Let us pray for God to encourage these believers and prosper them as their community now faces a significant loss of income. Let us also pray for Israel's government to recognize the injustice of protecting some citizens' freedom of choice while denying choice to those whose Bible-based beliefs and conscience require that they exclude themselves from certain business transactions. Now for a more encouraging request...

There are now more Jews living in Israel than in the United States—and many are more open to the gospel than Jews living in the United States. To help meet this opportunity, our team in Israel has been steadily growing in numbers. Please pray for the salvation of the many Israelis our team is connecting with on a daily basis, and for the special outreach we'll have in the fall. That effort, by the way, will also give us opportunities to witness to Arabs as well as Jews, and we look forward to reaching out to both.

The spiritual openness we're encountering in Israel is an amazing and encouraging development, along with our growing number of Jews for Jesus missionaries in Israel. Not surprisingly, it has been accompanied by an increase in spiritual attack there. The attacks from our unseen enemy are far more subtle and dangerous than the attacks from the religious Jewish community who oppose us. I am more aware than ever before of how Satan is seeking to undermine our gospel ministry in Israel. Whether through illness, discouragement, interpersonal conflict or marital concerns, the enemy of Jesus and the Jewish people seeks out the vulnerabilities of God's servants to try to destroy our peace and hobble our efforts. Let us pray for God's protection and encouragement for all the Jews for Jesus missionaries in Israel, indeed for all who are seeking to live for Jesus in the Land. Please pray especially for a young Israeli missionary couple from Jews for Jesus whom we are bringing to the U.S. so that we can minister to them during a season of great difficulty.

I could share many more prayer requests concerning Israel with you, but I feel burdened to share these specific requests with you now. Thank you for caring and for sharing our passion for the salvation of the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel. Stay tuned for more news updates and prayer needs.

Check it out:

In this month's Jews for Jesus Newsletter, David describes what rats can teach us about spiritual warfare. You can read his inspirational reflections here.
Also, David sent out a letter about God's mission strategy and the effect of Jews for Jesus on Gentiles. If you did not receive that letter you can see it here.

How Do I Love the Omer? Let Me Count the Ways.

by Rich Robinson

Currently, the Jewish community is in the midst of the 49-day period known as "counting the omer." This tradition originates from two verses in Leviticus:

From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the Lord. (Leviticus 23:15-16)

In context, the "day after the Sabbath" falls during Passover week. Omer is Hebrew for a sheaf, and so the entire period has become known as "the omer." Then, because the command is literally to "count off" seven weeks, observant Jews literally count each day, often using an "omer counter" as an aid in remembering which day it is. Forty-nine days of counting after Passover, then on the fiftieth day falls the holiday of Shavuot, better known to Christians as Pentecost (which, not surprisingly, means "fifty").

And there are as many ways of counting the omer as there are right-brained people. At The Omer Project (www.omerproject.com) in San Francisco, groups are meeting at 49 numbered streets in the Sunset and Richmond neighborhoods to mark off the days of the omer. ("Was G-d on the City Planning Commission, or what?", the site asks.) Can it be long before faithful Jewish 49er fans come up with a spin of their own?
At www.homercalendar.net, you can count the "Homer" instead of the "omer." Yes, forty-nine blissful days of Homer Simpson to guide you through the omer period.

Movie fans can count the omer at www.bangitout.com/movieomer/1.html (examples: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nestfor day one; Miracle on 34th Street for day 34). Go in for sports more than for films? No problem. Check outwww.bangitout.com/sportsomer/1.html where uniform numbers help you keep on track.
Some draw from Jewish mystical tradition to find spiritual significance in each of the forty-nine days. While I'm not much of one for Kabbalah, I did manage to find some meaningful biblical passages related to the number 49.  In the spirit of counting the omer, here are three I discovered:

Genesis 49:10 — "The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his." This is generally recognized as a prophecy of the Messiah to come. As counting the omer anticipates the holiday of Shavuot, so followers of Y'shua anticipate his return.

Psalm 49 — A meditation on the fate of those who do and don't trust God. Includes, "But God will redeem my life from the grave; he will surely take me to himself" (verse 15 in English, 16 in Hebrew). The Hebrew itself could be taken as either a reference to resurrection or to deliverance from premature death in this life. The former is something all believers in Y'shua can anticipate and in a way of speaking, "count the days" until we are raised from the dead at the end of time.

Luke 2:49 — " ‘Why were you searching for me?' he asked. ‘Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?' " After Passover—during the omer period—a young Jesus' went missing until his family located him with the teachers at the Temple — "learning," as they say in yeshiva.

There you have three "forty-nines." Can you find 46 more for the omer period? Let us know in the comments box on this page.

Yizkor for Bonhoeffer

We recently observed Yom Hashoah—a day set aside to remember the 6,000,000 victims of the Holocaust. IIn Jewish practice, it is important to remember (yizkor) the dead on the date of their death and to say Kaddish, a traditional Hebrew prayer, in their memory. Today (April 9) is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Flossenburg by the Nazis. These events—the holocaust and the execution of the Lutheran Pastor—are connected by history, but there is also a spiritual connection.

Throughout the Scriptures, God calls his people to remember God’s acts of salvation in history. The children of Israel were commanded to remember the Lord’s Passover when he delivered them from slavery in Egypt “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast (Exodus 12:14).” On Passover Y’shua broke matzah and instituted communion to be eaten “in remembrance of me (Luke 22:19).”

Passover and Easter also provide the context in which the people of God should memorialize the Holocaust. On the day Bonhoeffer was martyred he declared, “This is the end, for me the beginning of Life.” These words only make sense in view of Y’shua’s resurrection—His triumph over death. In Messiah, Bonhoeffer was able to declare victory on the day he was hung on a scaffold—like his Master.

Christians, no less than the Jewish people, are called to remember the Holocaust. True believers were victims alongside their Jewish brethren. Bonhoeffer understood that true followers of Jesus identified with his people. Bonhoeffer affirmed that, “It is rather the task of Christian preaching to say: here is the church, where Jew and German stand together under the Word of God; here is the proof whether a church is still the church or not (Rusty Swords, 225).” And, “Only he who cries out for the Jews can sing Gregorian chants.” Bonhoeffer was calling the church of Germany to remember who they really were, because they had forgotten and had betrayed Jesus—the Messiah of Israel. Let us learn from Bonhoeffer’s example and remember the Holocaust but in light of God’s victory over death and darkness in his Son, Y’shua our Lord.
Also see, Theresa Newell’s Essay, “Bonhoeffer and the Jews”

Mortality and Matthew Warren

In light of recent events—the passing of Rick Warren's son—we would like to highlight the thoughts of Sean Trank, the head of our media department, as he reflects on loss and how we can trust God to redeem our pain. Read his blog here.