ARRIVAL IN JERUSALEM FOR THE HIGH HOLY DAYS

Tel Aviv certainly was a wonderful place to relax; very warm; sunny with clouds to help break the heat and create beauty in the blue of the sky.

Hallelujah!

We met Clila Bau-Cohen, her sister Hadassah and her husband Haim, toured their Joseph Bau Museum, had dinner together and enjoyed touring the new Sarona development in Tel Aviv and, finally, enjoyed wonderful conversation late into the evening.

We met Clila & Haim first in Winnipeg last year and a warm friendship is growing; thanks Clila and Haim for a wonderful evening.

The next day, our last in Tel Aviv, we spent on one of their marvelous beaches.

Then, this morning, we left for Jerusalem and settled into our Jerusalem accommodations.

We are now into the final, and  longest, stage of our 2014 visit. The High Holy Days await us; and we enter that period by celebrating our 50th anniversary, September 25th on our calendar, 1st Tishrei, Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of 5775 on the Jewish calendar.

This Jerusalem stage is the heart of our calling to be in Israel for this time. We anticipate the Presence of the Sovereign LORD God of Israel in a special way here in the land that He personally selected for His Covenant people. Faithful to His Prophetic Word, both in the Torah, as the readings for this coming Shabbat clearly state, and in the Prophets, He is restoring His people to their Ancient, Ancestral Homeland, the LAND He promised to His Covenant people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Through faith, the Faith of our Father Abraham, we Gentiles, which includes my dear Grace and myself, have, according to the Apostle, Rabbi Paul, been "grafted in" to the ROOT that gave nurture and sustenance to Abraham and his descendants through Moses, Joshua, David and all the Prophets; the root that draws LIFE from the Creator Himself.

So, to be in the LAND that He chose as the place for His Holy Name to reside, the land in which Yeshua was born, taught, died and rose from the dead to be the LIGHT of God in a way that would be easier for the Gentile world to understand, to be here to celebrate our anniversary at the beginning of the Fall Feasts, motivated us to come even in the midst of the threats surrounding Israel today. 

We believe that Christ made the "circumcision of the heart" that Moses describes in Deuteronomy 30:6 as the essence of LIFE, available to all the world. We are here to thank the Jewish people for harboring and safeguarding the LIGHT of Torah, and the rest of the Biblical text, so that, as Christians, we have a sound heritage, the only reason for our existence; we now belong, in a mysterious way, to that same Faith of Abraham in which the physical descendants of Abraham find their LIFE. 

PRAISE THE LORD!