We live in a highly frenzied world where order has been gobbled up by “the tyranny of the urgent”. The possibility of personal peace endlessly eludes us? We ask, “How can I escape from my life being stolen from me?”
In a post-modern world, reality is only what it seems in the current moment of time. It is confirmed mostly by the boundaries limited to my sense of immediate experience.
These are lofty philosophical questions but very practical if we see time in Biblical terms.
Biblically, God crated time. And so, time is a critical component in how we live Biblically. Time is the context of Godly purpose. Order, discipline, creativity, Tikkun Olam (Jewish concept of repairing the world; namely implementing and facilitating Godly wholeness in others), and our very humanness is meant for and defined by purpose. This is the meaning of what is “Holy”.
Without the discipline and frame of time, there is chaos. Since God created order and placed us in its midst. The holiest thing we can do is conform to His purposes, contextualized in time. And so, as He acts in history to reveal what is holy, he regulates time through his “Moedim” (Appointed Times).
The very meaning of the sounding of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah (the “head of the New Year”) is to awaken us once again. “Awake from your slumber”. Or putting it differently, “Remember Me? Have you forgotten? Have you lost your way?
I remember a Broadway show called “Stop the World, I Want to Get Off”. Does that describe our lives? Do we frantically try to survive life to grasp at a few moments of “peace and happiness”? Is life in God simply moments of “just a spoonful of full of sugar helps the medicine go down”? In other words, is it just getting through most of the crisis of life to gain a few moments for self?
The Latin meaning of the word “amusement” is “not to think”. Do we spend 40 working hours a week thinking of ways how not to think on the weekends? We have a Yiddish slang for that, “Oy Vey”. Is yours and my life a frantic escaping of Oy Veys? Or have we found a path, a journey in time, through the Biblical order and reordering of time reminding us that God is the Master of life and conforming to His “Moedim” rescues us from its tyranny. If He created you and created time and created guideposts in time (remembrances of His Lordship in time the elusory peace we have frantically been pursuing no longer is dependent on us (that is the burden of the law “of time”). But, we can be restored by the order of time He gifts us with.
Judaism understands the Biblical prescriptions as a recycling of purpose in time. These are not laws! They are instructions intended to deliver us from the trap of time and remind us of that which we belong, the eternal purposes of the God whom we worship, namely the God who created and is Lord of all that is. I like to refer to it as a period on the calendar to “reboot”!
Christians have missed that these Holy Days as qualified revelations of God in time and the invitation to “fill the heavenly Rx” from heaven, prescribed as gifts. I suggest that no one leaves gifts unopened. How about opening these gifts this year? If you do not know how, we are here to help.
You and your families can grow, learn and participate in the observance of these Biblical Holy Days. You are welcome to enjoin yourself to Israel’s covenantal calling by attending the many opportunities to observe “God’s Appointed Times” with our Messianic Congregation, Adat Yeshua, the original Messianic Congregation of Kansas City this www.adatyeshuakc.com
It will not only be a “homecoming” but also find some “peace”!
To understand and learn of the Jewish practices of the High Holy days you are invited to an information and orientation evening, teaching the Biblical observances and traditional and Messianic ways to practice the Holy Days of Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. Tuesday evening September 4, 6:45 pm beginning with refreshments and desserts.
Adat Yeshua Messianic Congregation is located at 8512 Stearns Overland Park, (913) 888-7272.