Excerpts from the first sermon of 2022 for January 9-16 time of prayer and fasting.
2022 Fast Days Devotional
Day 1 - The Bible is full of new beginnings.
How many times do we see in the scriptures that God helped mankind start over?
After the fall. After the flood. God called Abraham out of Ur after the Babel incident. God brought Joseph to Egypt to save Jacobs family from famine. Then He brought the Israelites back out of Egypt. He brought them from the wilderness into the Promised Land. He took them out of the promised land into exile. And he brought them out of exile again.
I read for our leadership team an excerpt from a book about Passover written by a Rabbi and a friend of Robert Stearns. He says that the Torah is full of new beginnings and that God gave mankind a secret: the ability to begin again.
“Why is beginning again the secret of the Torah and a theme that emerges in seemingly everything Jewish? For perhaps the same reason that we are invited to the Seder in our capacity as broken. Our world is composed of broken individuals, relationships and communities. This brokenness does not happen at the beginning of a relationship. The permission to begin again is the only way that broken can be made whole.”
“This is so with broken people. A person may have damaged himself in infinite number of ways. In the process, he certainly will have disappointed and hurt many people- including those he loves and possibly profoundly. How, reflecting on the damage that he has done and caused, can he have the self-respect needed to live productively and fully? How can he continue? By knowing that the eternal and insistent invitation from God and through Judaism is to begin again.”
2022 Fast Days Devotional
Day 1 - The Bible is full of new beginnings.
How many times do we see in the scriptures that God helped mankind start over?
After the fall. After the flood. God called Abraham out of Ur after the Babel incident. God brought Joseph to Egypt to save Jacobs family from famine. Then He brought the Israelites back out of Egypt. He brought them from the wilderness into the Promised Land. He took them out of the promised land into exile. And he brought them out of exile again.
I read for our leadership team an excerpt from a book about Passover written by a Rabbi and a friend of Robert Stearns. He says that the Torah is full of new beginnings and that God gave mankind a secret: the ability to begin again.
“Why is beginning again the secret of the Torah and a theme that emerges in seemingly everything Jewish? For perhaps the same reason that we are invited to the Seder in our capacity as broken. Our world is composed of broken individuals, relationships and communities. This brokenness does not happen at the beginning of a relationship. The permission to begin again is the only way that broken can be made whole.”
“This is so with broken people. A person may have damaged himself in infinite number of ways. In the process, he certainly will have disappointed and hurt many people- including those he loves and possibly profoundly. How, reflecting on the damage that he has done and caused, can he have the self-respect needed to live productively and fully? How can he continue? By knowing that the eternal and insistent invitation from God and through Judaism is to begin again.”