Today’s Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 10:10-18; Psalm 80:1-7
I remember my second real job like it was yesterday. I was hired to work in the kitchen at the local pizzeria after my junior year of high school.
Those of you who know me well should be incredibly amused by the idea that I was paid by someone to work in the kitchen of a restaurant. Given my lack of cooking ability it would seem more logical that someone would have paid me to stay out of the kitchen! But I digress.
Once I finally started, I made a point of keeping the cheat sheet that included the list of ingredients for each of the pizzas with me every second I worked. I was terrified that I would leave something out. Needless to say, my first several weeks on the job weren’t a lot of fun because everything was so forced.
I would look at how quickly and naturally my co-workers (who had been on the job for months) made their pizzas and feel incredibly inadequate. Over time, however, I got the hang of things and internalized the menu. By the end of the summer you could say I knew my around a kitchen pretty well.
In today’s passage from Jeremiah, the author notes the Israelites were a lot like me in the kitchen those first few weeks on the job – they felt it necessary to “set up schools to teach each other about God” (Jeremiah 31:34 from The Message). God envisioned a different way of being for them, however; a way whereby they could set aside the equivalent of their cheat sheets and find their way to God through their hearts: a time when they could rest easy in their relationship with God because they knew God “firsthand”.
So how would you characterize the dynamic of your relationship with God? Are you in a place where the relationship feels comfortable and easy, or are you in a place where it feels a bit forced? The good news is that – much like my experience in the kitchen of the restaurant that summer – the more you hang out together the more natural the relationship will feel.
Til next time…
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1 comment:
Hello Craig Peterson!
You wrote: “In today’s passage from Jeremiah, the author notes the Israelites were a lot like me in the kitchen those first few weeks on the job – they felt it necessary to “set up schools to teach each other about God” (Jeremiah 31:34 from The Message).”
I want to comment about this verse.
It is about the berit khadashah (“new covenant”).
If you read the verses in Hebrew you see that in the berit khadashah the Creator will put Torah (that is the mitzwot (commandments in Torah) in the hearts of the followers of the berit (“covenant”). The Creator does not change (Malakhi 3:6) and his mitzwot (“commandments” ) does not change (Devarim (“Deuteronomy”) 13:1-6).
So to be in a relationship with the Creator one must observe His mitzwot in His Torah, which includes not eating pork, celebrating Shabat (for example not working on it) and many other mitzwot in Torah.
I think that the website Netzarim will be of interest to you. It contains logical and scientific research, previously unknown to most Christians, about the first century Ribi Yehoshua (ha-Mashiakh, the Messiah) from Nazareth and what he and his followers taught. His teachings are in accordance with Torah, the instruction manual, of the Creator to humankind.
All the best, Anders Branderud
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