Light In Torah

In our study yesterday, I shared with you some thoughts on love/ahava. If you didn’t get a chance to meditate and think about those thoughts, I would encourage you to go back and think them through in relation to all your current and past relationships as well as the ones in the future.  Note: part of living the image of God is simultaneously living in the past, present and future. Huh? Think about that for a minute or two :-). Every decision you make throughout the day is based on past experiences in light of your current circumstances and the hope of the best future.  I was asked a pertinent question yesterday: is hatred, loving somebody less? Or is it truly hatred? Does God, who is love, hate? The word for hatred/SANE it’s often translated to hate, which as we can all testify, describes an emotional reaction of repulsion. A person who has this feeling strongly desires to keep distance from the offense or the offender. In other words, hate is all about distance. It’s just th...

If man/adam, formed from the dust of the earth/adamah, is made in the image/tzelem and likeness/dumut of God...and God sees our affliction and hears our cries (Ex. 3:7) because He is love (1 Jn. 4:8) and a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24) that eradicates anything not good and purifies that which is good... shouldn't we be imitators of Him (Eph. 5:1,2)? Of Yeshua, The One Who is God and with God (Jn. 1:1; Gen. 1:1 [in Hebrew]) the Word made flesh (Jn. 1:14), it is said of those who follow Him that they will be known by their love (Jn. 13:35), by abiding in the Word (Jn. 8:31) and by bearing fruit (Jn. 15:8).  As we head into 2026 I want to shed a little of God's loving image into your life by reintroducing you to the concept of the earthly-heavenly love connection.  Are you ready to fill your love tank?  We love God because He first loved us (1 Jn. 4:10). The question that I ask myself this morning is how do we fall in love (with God and our honey bunny)? And, how and why does ...

Many of you already know, as your life becomes more saturated with His presence, you’ll find yourself focused more on the things you love, spending less time on the things you tolerate and none of the time on the things you dislike the most! Consequently, the breaches in our walls that have occurred in the past will then be able to be repaired. And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. (Isa. 58:11, 12) Man was created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28)! That can raise some interesting pictures in our mind. In of ourselves we are not holy, or righteous, or omniscient, or omnipotent, or omnipresent, or...What we are,  is in His i...

So many people in the digital age have an obsession about what other people think about themselves. Jacob is giving to his children the blessings/brachot in this week's Torah portion, vayechi/and he lived; helping us to know what will happen in the 'end of days'..."The coming of the Messiah, finding something lost and the scorpion sting": What kind of discovery will that day be for you (Gen. 49:1)  In one of Jacob/Israel's blessings he speaks to his son Dan/judgment. He looks at Dan and he blesses him with the statement  "that his descendents will be judges over God's people, as one of the tribes of Israel, like a serpent in the way, like an adder in the path that bites the horses heels, so that his rider falls backwards. I have waited for your salvation/Yeshua  (Gen. 49:16-18) One of Dan's descendents, known as Samson, that super powerful person who demonstrated superhuman strength, found that his strength became his weakness. Why? How come? Beca...

On New Year's Eve day, I was on my way to the morning staff bible study being prayed for on the phone. During the prayer, the Aaronic Blessing was prayerfully quoted. I shared with my prayer warrior my joyful passion over this blessed topic (Numbers 6:24-26).   “The LORD bless you and keep you:  The LORD make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you:  The LORD lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. (Num. 6:24-26)   Let’s start 2026 off together with a deeper than normal look at this traditional prayer. Who knows, this may just become a part of a New Year's resolution to bless your family on a regular basis.   The best way to know whether or not you’d like to make this a practice is to know  what the individual pieces of this three part prayer contain. At first glance the terms seem pretty ambiguous at best (bless, keep, gracious, countenance, and peace). However, if we take a Hebraic perspective of the terms the prayer of blessing come...