Life’s signals can get confusing, but it’s vital to stay alert, use our gifts and care for others. This study explores the meaning of Yom Teruah (Day of Blowing Trumpets aka Rosh Hashanah) and the call to be spiritually ready, using parables like the 10 virgins, talents, and sheep and goats. The message? Be prepared for the unexpected, don’t get distracted by false signals, and let your actions reflect faith and compassion. Are you ready for Heaven’s call when it comes?
“What did you know, and when did you know it?” That could have been what Yeshua asked the experts in God’s words upon their challenging of His authority to teach as and what He did. Instead, Yeshua reached into their “toolbox” — Torah, Prophets and Writings — and revealed that not only were some of their “tools” rusty from neglect but also neglected maintenance left them in danger of a catastrophic failure of the machinations they created about God’s Anointed One.
Many ask something like, “Why do the good die young and the evil seem to live forever?” Yeshua answered two questions about whether sin brought on two tragedies at that time by saying those weren’t punishment for sin, but all need to take notice that a big disaster for Israel — Rome’s destruction of Yerushalayim — was coming and need turn back to God.
We continue to explore the “gospel” that Paul delivered to the Galatians by reading what is recorded of his messages to those congregations and his parallel explanations in letter to other congregations. Today, we explore Ephesians 2-4 and its discussion of the “new man” and “old man.”
During the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths (Sukkot in Hebrew), a long-standing ceremony has been the waving of a bundle of plants and a citrus fruit toward the four points of the compass. There is an important message for all times in what those plants symbolize.