#pit against themes of jewish endurance

[raayllum]

4x05 / 4x09

[kingdomofthelogos]

The Faithful & True

Read Revelation 19

Download a printable version here.

Meanwhile the world shall burn, and from her ashes spring new Heav’n and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell, and after all their tribulations long see golden days, fruitful of golden deeds, with joy and love triumphing, and fair truth. Such words are not hollow, but when their meaning is forgotten we must rouse them to the forefront of our minds. God is sovereign, and with loving mercy He desires none for eternal calamity, but that all might enter into repentance.

We live in interesting times, wherein man has forgotten he is a fallen creature. Where he cannot discern the value of his own nation; moreover, where he lacks clarity on what is good and true. At the pit of this malady is a critical failure: man has forgotten that God is good, thereby forgetting the only metric sufficient to determine if anything is good. Our principal Scripture for today is Revelation 19:11, reading: and I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

Anything taken for granted will be lost; moreover, anything excepted from severe accountability will grow evil like cancer. Christ comes to afford us victory, and we must be men and women who will courageously stand against evil in our present day. The less the church teaches against sin and evil, the less people will desire holiness and freedom. Sin is both naturally desirable and naturally enslaving. People naturally prefer bondage to their own sins over the liberty that God has in store for us. However, we are not saved in order that we might be content to let our neighbors endure the sin and its miserable fruits. Instead, we are called to assert holiness that people might live with freedom. Chaos grows when we are passive about the darkness of their hour.

Without an appreciation for holiness and freedom, we find ourselves in a generation of ingrates who believe all manner of folly. Some believe the world is naturally a utopia, and if they could tear everything down they would find a better society. Others have surrendered their minds to idols that think, provide, and ultimately enslave them. People are confused about who they are, and spend their lives in pursuit of ever increasing desires for ever diminishing returns.

Our culture is now afflicted with an inability to agree on truth, and this is the undeniable mark of a society that no longer values God. Christ Jesus is both the Way, the Truth, and the Life, as well as the Faithful and True. Belief in absolute truth is a direct product in believing in a singular God who is absolutely sovereign. Belief that there are multiple truths is a hallmark of paganism and heathenism. Our culture has declined to the point that we can clearly see the fruits of rejecting God. The removal of God was sold to people as a means of freedom and liberty, but in truth, it was the desolation of freedom and liberty.

Freedom, as designed by God, is the ability to live without the tyranny of inescapable burdens. Christ liberates us from sins which we could not otherwise escape. Those who assembled together to pave what is now America, did so under Christian conviction. In consideration of Independence Day, let us appreciate what it means for God to be sovereign, and that the good things of God come at a cost. Moreover, let us examine the language in some of our founding documents and weigh them against our current hour.

In the Name of God. Amen. These were the opening words of the Mayflower compact, the pilgrims were not timid in their pursuit. For the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith: a voyage into the northern parts of Virginia. These words were not of worldly ambition, but a product of Christian motivation; moreover, the Mayflower was itself a congregation of believers who undertook the danger of pioneering into the unknown as an act of faith. It was neither safe nor comfortable, they put aside any desires for comfort in order to sacrifice for a future society where their children could freely prosper with God.

The foundation of the Declaration of Independence is that there is a higher authority than worldly governments, and should worldly governments and human institutions rebel against God in their pursuit of tyrannies, then it becomes onerous of God-fearing men and women to declare who is God. For indeed, there come hours in the cascade of history where obedience to tyrants is rebellion against God. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego understood this, for bowing to Nebuchadnezzar’s golden statue would have put them in sin with God. God Himself was vividly present in rejecting the institutions of Egypt that His people might be free. Christ did not renounce His ministry in compliance with unGodly Roman laws or aberrant Jewish doctrines.

The Declaration of Independence states its premise in the following words:  When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. Thomas Jefferson’s words invoke the sovereignty and authority of God and His natural law as the impetus for their rejection of England.

Jefferson then opens the argument saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Then, the closing argument in repetition of the providential theme writes: “We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown.”

In both the opening and closing of the Declaration’s critical argument, Thomas Jefferson and the assembly therewith, acknowledges a higher authority than kings and worldly ambitions. Moreover, God’s sovereignty is not only invoked as part of an appeal of affirmation, but also of judgement. The opening clause of the Declaration’s final argument invokes God’s judgment before recognizing their own authority as men, and in doing so they are asking providence to punish them if they are wrong or to bless them if they are correct.

Do we invoke God’s goodness and judgment in our lives? Do we live as if the goodness of God comes to make all things new, whereby the old order of sin and chaos will be dissolved in an act of final calamity? Do we remember that God is sovereign, and that His goodness truly desires for us a world clean of sin and death? So many have been robbed of a life of victory, courage, and freedom. Let us stand with Christ, the Faithful and True, that we might undertake serious positions in the spiritual warfare around us. Let us be a people who are longsuffering and hastening for the Day of God.

[dfroza]

A man who was lied about, falsely accused.

which is a common theme read in the True storyline of the Bible, even toward the Lord our Creator (who is Light and Love itself) when people falsely accused Him on earth 2,000 years ago, which resulted in a death sentence (although this act of grace freed us by taking it in our place for our own sins)

and we read of such an occurance of being lied about by others in Today’s chapter of the New Testament with Stephen in Acts 6:

During those days the number of Jesus’ followers kept multiplying greatly. But a complaint was brought against those who spoke Aramaic by the Greek-speaking Jews,who felt their widows were being overlooked during the daily distribution of food.

The twelve apostles called a meeting of all the believers and told them, “It is not advantageous for us to be pulled away from the word of God to wait on tables. We want you to carefully select from among yourselves seven godly men. Make sure they are honorable, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, and we will give them the responsibility of this crucial ministry of serving. That will enable us to give our full attention to prayer and preaching the word of God.”

Everyone in the church loved this idea. So they chose seven men. One of them was Stephen, who was known as a man full of faith and overflowing with the Holy Spirit. Along with him they chose Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas from Antioch, who had converted to Judaism. All seven stood before the apostles, who laid their hands on them and prayed for them, commissioning them to this ministry.

God’s word reigned supreme and kept spreading. The number of Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem quickly grew and increased by the day. Even a great number of Jewish priests became believers and were obedient to the faith!

Stephen, who was a man full of grace and supernatural power, performed many astonishing signs and wonders and mighty miracles among the people. This upset some men belonging to a sect who called themselves the Men Set Free. They were Libyans, Egyptians, and Turks.

They all confronted Stephen to argue with him. But the Holy Spirit gave Stephen remarkable wisdom to answer them. His words were prompted by the Holy Spirit, and they could not refute what he said. So the Men Set Free conspired in secret to find those who would bring false accusations against Stephen and lie about him by saying, “We heard this man speak blasphemy against Moses and God.”

The Men Set Free agitated the crowd, the elders, and the religious scholars, then seized Stephen and forcefully took him before the supreme council. One after another, false witnesses stepped forward and accused Stephen, saying, “This man never stops denigrating our temple and our Jewish law. For we have heard him teach that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy the temple and change the traditions and customs that Moses handed down to us.”

Every member of the supreme council focused his gaze on Stephen, for right in front of their eyes, while being falsely accused, his face glowed as though he had the face of an angel!

The Book of Acts, Chapter 6 (The Passion Translation)

to be followed up by wisdom from the lines of Psalm 2 and Proverbs 2 for the 2nd of january that illumines the fear of the Lord as a form of humble reverence and respect:

[Psalm 2]

You are wondering: What has provoked the nations to embrace anger and chaos?

Why are the people making plans to pursue their own vacant and empty greatness?

Leaders of nations stand united;

rulers put their heads together,

plotting against the Eternal One and His Anointed King, trying to figure out

How they can throw off the gentle reign of God’s love,

step out from under the restrictions of His claims to advance their own schemes.

At first, the Power of heaven laughs at their silliness.

The Eternal mocks their ignorant selfishness.

But His laughter turns to rage, and He rebukes them.

As God displays His righteous anger, they begin to know the meaning of fear. He says,

“I am the One who appointed My king who reigns from Zion, My mount of holiness.

He is the one in charge.”

I am telling all of you the truth. I have heard the Eternal’s decree.

He said clearly to me, “You are My son.

Today I have become your Father.

The nations shall be yours for the asking,

and the entire earth will belong to you.

They are yours to crush with an iron scepter,

yours to shatter like fragile, clay pots.”

So leaders, kings, and judges,

be wise, and be warned.

There is only one God, the Eternal;

worship Him with respect and awe;

take delight in Him and tremble.

Bow down before God’s son.

If you don’t, you will face His anger and retribution,

And you won’t stand a chance.

For it doesn’t take long to kindle royal wrath,

But blessings await all who trust in Him.

They will find God a gentle refuge.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 2 (The Voice)

[Proverbs 2]

My son, if you accept what I am telling you

and store my counsel and directives deep within you,

If you listen for Lady Wisdom, attune your ears to her,

and engage your mind to understand what she is telling you,

If you cry out to her for insight

and beg for understanding,

If you sift through the clamor of everything around you

to seek her like some precious prize,

to search for her like buried treasure;

Then you will grasp what it means to truly respect the Eternal,

and you will have discovered the knowledge of the one True God.

The Eternal is ready to share His wisdom with us,

for His words bring true knowledge and insight;

He has stored up the essentials of sound wisdom for those who do right;

He acts as a shield for those who value integrity.

God protects the paths of those who pursue justice,

watching over the lives of those who keep faith with Him.

With this wisdom you will be able to choose the right road,

seek justice, and decide what is good and fair

Because wisdom will penetrate deep within

and knowledge will become a good friend to your soul.

Sound judgment will stand guard over you,

and understanding will watch over you as the Lord promised.

Wisdom will keep you from following the way of evildoers,

of those who twist words to pervert the truth,

Of those who reject the right road

for a darker, more sinister way of life,

Of those who enjoy evil

and pursue perverse pleasures,

Of those who journey down a crooked path,

constantly figuring out new ways to trick and deceive others.

Wisdom will pluck you from the trap of a seductive woman,

from the enticing propositions of the adulteress

Who chose to leave the husband of her youth,

to forget her sacred promises to her God;

For her house is on the road that leads to death,

and her path goes down to the shadowy pit.

Those who go to her will never return;

they will never again find their way back to true life.

As for you, you should walk like those who are good

and keep to the paths of those who love justice,

For those who live right will remain in the land

and those with integrity will endure here.

But not the wicked; they will be forced out and banned from this promised land,

and those who deal in deceit will be plucked up like weeds.

The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 2 (The Voice)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for Thursday, january 2 of 2020, simultaneously the 13th day of Winter

[topmixtrends]

I REMEMBER THE FRISSON of excitement that rippled through this nation two summers ago as we anticipated the Great American Eclipse. It was ours and ours alone, starting in Oregon and ending in South Carolina. For a few brief minutes we could forget about the hate exploding in Charlottesville and Donald Trump’s “blame-on-both-sides” travesty. The heavens were about to upstage the new president, turn off the lights, and cast our world into a profound, welcome stillness.

But as the skies darkened, traffic jams clogged the roads. Millions tweeted, blogged, broadcast, live-streamed. From a cruise ship, Bonnie Tyler belted out her signature song, “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” to the swaying, bespectacled crowd. Not since 1776 had America been awarded an eclipse all its own, and for one sweet day we were one nation under God, indivisible, heads tilted in awe and anticipation.

It is hard to imagine a celestial symbol better suited to a dramatic tale than a blackened sun. Shakespeare and Milton used it, and so have American writers from Mark Twain to Stephen King. Now add to that list Rachel Barenbaum, who places an eclipse squarely at the center of her ambitious, sweeping debut, A Bend in the Stars. Set in Russia at the beginning of World War I, her novel takes us on a harrowing ride in pursuit of the solar eclipse of 1914.

The significance of these celestial events radiates far beyond science. As the Earl of Gloucester warns in King Lear, “These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good for us.” For some, an eclipse is a sign of the devil; for others, it foreshadows the end of the world. And for one of this novel’s protagonists, Vanya Abramov — a passionate young scientist whose hazardous journey we follow over 450 pages — it holds his future. Through it he hopes to disprove Einstein’s early theories about relativity and to secure a life in the United States, where his family can live safely.

Vanya is convinced that Einstein’s original theory is doubly flawed: it failed to take into account the effects of gravity, and it was based on the assumption that objects move at constant speeds. Early on he tells his skeptical sister, Miri: “Gravity bends space and light. The eclipse will prove it. And that proof, it will change everything.”

Even though he is barely out of his teens, there is something of the mad professor in Vanya — his disheveled appearance, his obsession with equations, his distracted air. His sister points out that his scheme sounds delusional, and the reader is likely to agree. He has no way of getting to the eclipse; he doesn’t have the necessary calculations to disprove Einstein; if he actually witnesses the eclipse, he needs photographs of light bending in order to make his case. And for that last, crucial step, he has to rely on an American scientist who has never heard of him.

As if all this uncertainty weren’t deterrent enough, Vanya also faces a powerful enemy at home, a creepy character named Kir. He is the chair of Vanya’s department at the university, a brooding presence with enormous hands. Kir hovers around Vanya waiting to snatch his latest calculations. Already he has stolen a batch of Vanya’s notes and published them under his own name, to great acclaim. When Vanya protested, Kir whispered, “Remember you’re a Jew.” Antisemitism hangs over this novel as an oppressive, ever-present shadow, embodied in any number of characters eager to destroy the idealistic and daring siblings. Through graphic descriptions, Barenbaum brings into sharp focus the threats and assaults Jews endured under the tsarist regime.

At the beginning of A Bend in the Stars, Miri and Vanya are living with their grandmother, a wise, tough woman who serves as the local matchmaker to the Jewish community of Kovno (present-day Kaunas). She escaped the pogroms of Odessa and now sees signs of the same violent hatred infiltrating this town. She says to her grandchildren: “Death will come, again. They’ll blame us Jews. For war. For starvation. Cold. Haven’t I taught you? Hasn’t the past been loud enough?”

The tsar’s army is rounding up Jewish men to use as fodder in the war. Vanya signs up before they can conscript him. That way, he reasons, he can request a post near where the American scientist is expected to witness the eclipse. Miri thinks her brother has made a deadly mistake, that on the battlefield he’d be lost in his equations and wouldn’t survive. Neither, she thinks, would her handsome fiancé, Yuri, who is a surgeon and Miri’s mentor at the local Jewish hospital. She sees in him a softness that she adores, and she is stunned to learn that he, too, has signed up for the army, and that he vows to accompany her brother on his quixotic quest.

Meanwhile, Miri is reluctant to leave Kovno herself, despite her grandmother’s warnings. Recently she has been promoted from doctor to surgeon — a rare accomplishment for a woman in Russia, and unheard of in this town. Just as this most deeply held wish is realized, her family urges her to leave, and she resists. But within days of Vanya and Yuri’s departure, Miri’s life takes a dramatic turn and she has no choice but to flee and go searching for her brother and fiancé. Accompanying her is Sasha Petrov, a dashing defector from the army whom she rescues and hides in her grandmother’s cellar.

Some elements of this setup seem unnecessarily convoluted, and at times the reader’s patience is strained as Barenbaum reiterates the novel’s premise. But as Miri boards her first train with Sasha and we begin the siblings’ harrowing parallel journeys, Barenbaum tightens the pressure and pace. We are with Miri and Vanya every step of the way, racing across Russia, leaping from train to train, and hurrying through short, tense chapters. Like a constantly ticking clock, the chapters written from Vanya’s point of view begin with a reminder of how many days, how many minutes, how many hours remain until the all-important eclipse. In the chapters written from Miri’s perspective, tension comes from the grueling trials she and Sasha endure to reach her brother and fiancé, and a growing attraction that is unspoken but hard to ignore.

In many ways, A Bend in the Stars reads like a folktale: the young heroes face an arduous journey and a difficult quest; they are brilliant and good-looking and pure of spirit. The villains, of course, are odious and ugly — one is described as having a nose and cheeks “littered with broken blood vessels and pores that looked like gaping holes.” But this is not purely a good-versus-evil adventure. A third of the way through, a wily sailor named Dima appears, and with him, the story gains texture. Dima is rough but endearing, a schemer out to make as much money as he can. If that means double-crossing the “pathetic soldiers,” well, that’s just the cost of doing business. When it seems Dima has betrayed Yuri and Vanya, Yuri takes him for a Jew-hater and asks, “Why does it still have to come down to that — to being Jewish?”

¤

Barenbaum names the five main sections of the novel after months in the Jewish calendar, which itself is based on astronomical phenomena. In so doing, she threads into the novel’s fabric two central themes — what it means to be a Jew in Russia in the early 1900s, and the power of celestial forces. “Life doesn’t travel in a straight line,” we are told early on, and Barenbaum herself bends time and space by bracketing the novel with chapters set in modern-day America, which provide a startling and rewarding denouement.

Some of the novel’s best writing is in descriptions of place, whether it be a horrific hospital scene, a train station coated in coal ash, a city’s bejeweled spires, or a river that “smelled of waste and moved so slowly sticks oozed past like slugs.” Barenbaum embeds the reader in a three-dimensional world of slums, cities, and war-ravaged countryside, far from the gauzy shtetl tableaux one remembers from Fiddler on the Roof. She is equally deft at capturing dramatic events. A tussle in an alley, a long-anticipated kiss, a woman giving birth — in simple phrases, Barenbaum builds toward these moments, lingers on them, and wrings out every particle of suspense. The eclipse itself she handles with straightforward effectiveness:

The last shadows fell over the fruit trees in the orchard. Light came through the leaves in the quarter-moon shape of the eclipse.

A black veil slid over to the house and covered the dacha.

The animals that had been so loud just seconds earlier, stilled.

Day turned to night.

Occasionally, the writing is overly intense, as when a character describes an eclipse as a passionate act, “the kind that makes a woman want to jump into the bath with a man after a sweaty day.” Conversely, at times the writing goes limp. In one instance night is simply described as being “as dark as dark can be.” As the story reaches its conclusion, Barenbaum rushes through events and I found myself wishing she’d slow down and allow the story to breathe. The narrative of Dima the sailor, in particular, gets short shrift and is wrapped up in a summary. But these are minor complaints. The novel offers an epic adventure that spins through rich terrain; several engrossing love stories, including one between remarkable siblings; and a scientific intrigue that pits dark ambition against a passionate love of science.

From my deck in Massachusetts on that August afternoon in 2017, I watched the day turn mildly sullen. Crescent-shaped shadows spilled from the colander that I held in my hands. Even though mine was the slimmest of partial eclipses, I felt its power, and my smallness. Likewise, with the eclipse of 1914 as both backdrop and main event, A Bend in the Stars reveals our collective impotence against the whims of the universe. And yet, the characters Barenbaum brings to life demonstrate resilience in the face of prejudice, steadfastness in the face of defeat, and the ability to love even when the world has cracked with hate.

¤

Jean Hey’s essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Plain Dealer, The Chicago Tribune, and Solstice Magazine. She is currently at work on a novel set in South Africa.

The post Celestial Events: On Rachel Barenbaum’s “A Bend in the Stars” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://bit.ly/2YtGcHO