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KINDLE THE SABBATH LIGHTS
O YHWH, Creator God, Lord and Master of the Universe,
Giver of Life, Source of Light, Author of All that Exist—-
You revealed Yourself on a mountain in the wilderness of Sinai
to a people You had formed into a nation
descended from Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov.
With them You cut a Covenant,
that You would be their new Lord and Master, that they might serve You,
and make known Your will and purpose for all humanity,
by modeling Your Way of Life,
so that peoples and nations might be drawn to them as Your ‘light to the gentiles’,
so that all might come to know You as the One True God
and call upon Your Name, O YHWH.
Yet today, even as that revelation on Sinai
has long been recorded and preserved in the Scriptures of Israel,
for posterity, for all time, for all humanity,
only a remnant of Your people live Your Way, live Your Torah,
only a remnant call on Your Name.
The nations still go their way instead of your Way,
and majority of humankind continue to worship
—-not You, O YHWH—
but gods of their own making, gods according to man’s image,
replacing You and calling on names other than Yours.
It is as though everything you had accomplished in time past
and through the history of your chosen people
have come to naught.
As remnant Israel commemorate the liberation
of the ‘exodus generation’ from bondage
under Pharaoh’s cruel taskmasters,
we Sinaites,
just like the non-Israelites in the ‘mixed multitude’ that left Egypt,
reflect on our own ‘exodus’ from the ‘Egypt’ of today
which hold sway over people in religions
led by ‘pharaohs who ‘know You not,’
just like’ the pharaoh who knew not Yosef’ and his God.
Born in man-made religion,
raised to accept inherited beliefs without question,
we blindly and faithfully served gods whom we did not fully understand,
whose mysterious nature we simply accepted ‘by faith’;
and even as we diligently studied the “newer” testament
which we mistakenly believed were ‘the very words of God’.
So misled were we and fully convinced that the truth we were fed
was divinely-sourced and not of human invention.
Through the decades we spent serving a god that was not You,
little did we realize we were in ‘bondage’ as well,
ignoring Your commandments,
neglecting Your teachings and instructions
as revealed in Your one-time, complete Revelation on that mountain in the wilderness of Sinai.
Like blind guides we led others into idolatry,
propagating ‘truths’ based on questionable writings of men
passed off as ‘the very words of God’,
teaching to live ‘by grace
and not by ‘Your Torah’ which was ‘done away with’.
In the historic exodus of Your chosen people,
You accomplished through miracle after miracle,
their deliverance from Egyptian bondage.
The record of their deliverance
has been available and accessible to all humanity,
no one has any excuse not to learn about You
and Your acts in the history of Your servant people.
And so we chose to shift our allegiance
from the strange god of our former faith
to You, O YHWH,
the One and Only True God,
God of Israel, Revelator on Sinai.
We have been liberated from our self-imposed bondage to ignorance;
our darkened minds have been enlightened
by the Sacred Scriptures of Israel.
Your truth had been staring us and all humanity in the face;
Your truth was imbedded in the very ‘bibles’ we carried,
to discover, to study, to learn from, to lead us to You;
and yet for so long we missed seeing Your Light,
and we failed hearing Your voice
because we mindlessly followed the same beaten path
that many God-seekers had worn out for two millennia;
because by individual choice, even as we endlessly studied
the ‘map’ we had been given and followed,
little did we know it was headed in a different direction
leading to the wrong destination.
Image from artwork of Kathleen Reilly, www.ubm1.org
And yet Lord YHWH just as You had promised
“You will seek Me and find Me,
when you seek Me with all your heart,
I will be found by you.“
[Yirmeyahu 29:31]
Certainly that promise was not for Israel alone,
but for all who have been led to Your Torah in the Scriptures of Your chosen people.
So we have responded,
just like the non-Israelites who joined the mixed multitude in the first Exodus from Egypt:
We will go with you [O Israel],
And so finally we did find the life-map leading to You,
not toward Rome, not toward Jerusalem,
but toward the symbolic mountain of Sinai,
the historic site of Your Self-Revelation,
unidentified and unlocated in this day,
but it matters not; for what ultimately matters is
You, O YHWH,
the God Who spoke to the ‘mixed multitude’
about how all humankind are to live with one another
on this beautiful planet You created,
perfect in all ways to sustain life for all your creatures,
and specifically for humankind.
Now that we have partaken of Your Tree of Life, Your Torah
which nurtures us with its life-nourishing fruit,
we look back to the beginning of our final journey
that turned us toward Sinai in year 2010,
and it bewilders us to think that as misguided as we had been,
how we backtracked to the foundational Scriptures
in our bible that had always pointed to ‘the WAY’
that would lead to ‘the TRUTH’ about YOU
Who is the only Source and Giver of ‘the LIFE’.
We fervently believe that all through the ages
since You crafted humankind on day six of Creation week,
You have been calling every person
ever blessed with your ‘breath of life’ on this earth—-
for each one to seek to know You
and recognize You as the One and Only God,
and know that there is no other, none before and none after.
You have cued us to watch with wonder and amazement
Your Mighty Hand upon Your firstborn son, Israel
as they interact with the nations.
Israel reached the Land of Promise,
then lost it to gentile powers,
but is providentially back in the Land,
once again defending its right to re-establish itself
in a territory whose divinely-set boundaries
have been redefined and reassigned by humanity’s league of nations.
O God of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov,
strangely by its very survival and existence,
Israel continues to reflect Your Light,
even as nations fail to understand Your designed purpose
in setting apart a people, a reborn nation.
We join Israel in their ‘wilderness wandering’ today,
except their destination is different from ours,
because it has been Your design,
that they will be based in the Land promised to their Patriarchs,
and so their Passover Seder ends with
“next year in Jerusalem.”
We Sinaites are not of Israel, have not been promised the Land,
and so we choose to return to the mountain of Your Revelation,
and live according to what You have taught from there,
ever learning to discern and determine what is for Israel,
and what is for us, gentiles.
We heed the prophet Isaiah’s reminder:
“To the TORAH and the TESTIMONY,
if they speak not according to this Word
there is no light in them”
(Isaiah 8:20).
We are grateful to You, O YHWH,
for liberating us from our ignorance,
from our lack of understanding,
from being for so long blind and deaf to Your call
yet so quick to speak half truths and non-truths,
in our zeal to proclaim what we mistakenly thought was Your Truth.
We are beholden to You, O YHWH, for delivering us—–
from the cowardice that made us shirk from Your truth,
from the laziness that made us content with half truth,
from the arrogance that made us think we knew all truth.
We reiterate our conviction that
there is no knowledge more important than
the knowledge of You, O YHWH,
and that the beginning of wisdom is reverence
not just for a ‘god’ or any ‘god’
but for You as You have declared Yourself through Your prophet Moshe:
”YHWH, YHWH God,
merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
by no means clearing the guilty . . . “
[Exodus 34:5-7]
And through the prophet Yirmeyahu 9:23:
“Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
or the strong man boast of his strength
or the rich man boast of his riches
But let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows
Me,
that I Am
YHWH
Who exercises
kindness, justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight,”
declares the LORD.
Blessed are You, YHWH, God of Israel and the nations,
Whose Name all Sinaites proclaim,
Amen.
BLESSINGS
[Tune: Bless this House O Lord we pray, revised lyrics]
Bless this wine O Lord we pray,
joy in life from day to day.
Bless this bread that from the earth,
It has nurtured us from birth,
Bread and wine for us to share
from your providential care.
Image from Image from Image from www.mcjc.org
Bless our loved ones, if You may
keep them safe from day to day;
may they choose to live Your Way,
may they learn to serve and say
how they love You more each day,
Bless us all, this Sabbath day.
[Name your loved ones:
parents, siblings, spouse,
sons, daughters, grandchildren,
in-laws, extended family, friends.]
SABBATH MEAL
Image from hakallah_by_badusev-d5veid1.png
TORAH STUDY
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HAVDALAH
[Jewish Source: The New Union Prayer Book,
For the Days of Awe]
The God of all, who reigned supreme,
Ere first creation’s form was framed;
When all was finished by Your will,
Your Name Almighty was proclaimed.
When this, our world, shall be no more,
in majesty You still shall reign,
Who was, Who is, Who will remain,
Your endless glory we proclaim.
Alone are You, beyond compare,
Without division or ally,
Without initial date or end,
Omnipotent You rule on high.
You are my God, my Saviour You,
To whom I turn in sorrow’s hour—
My banner proud, my refuge sure,
Who hears and answers with Your pow’r.
Then in Your hand myself I lay,
And trusting sleep, and wake with cheer,
My soul and body are Your care;
You are my Guard, I have no fear.
