Ruth 1:16-17 But Ruth said: “Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me.”
Yesterday, Israel observed Yom HaShoah—Holocaust Remembrance Day—honoring the memory of the six million Jews who perished. Tragically, a recent poll reveals that nearly half of Israelis fear the possibility of another Holocaust. In light of this sobering reality, I want to share a powerful story of one remarkable woman who rescued 2,500 Jewish children from the ghettos during World War II.
Her name was Irene Sendler. She was an employee of the Polish Social Warfare Department who had a special permit to enter the ghettos to check for signs of typhus. During these visits, she would wear a Star of David as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people. Once inside, she would convince Jewish parents to part with their children as she and others created for them false papers and smuggled them out so to put them in various good homes around Poland. Sendler then buried the children’s true identities in jars in her backyard, hoping to reunite them with their families after the war.
In 1943, Irene was arrested by the Gestapo, severely tortured and sentenced to death. She was able to save herself by bribing German guards on the way to her execution. Listed on bulletin boards among those who had been executed, she was left in the woods unconscious, with broken arms and legs. For the remainder of the war, she lived in hiding. Though she had suffered much, she continued her work with Jewish children.
In 2007, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and lost to former vice president Al Gore.
May we take up the call of Ruth – “your people shall be my people, and your God shall be my God!” To Israel and the Jewish People, know that you have thousands of friends standing in solidarity with you!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]For centuries in Ethiopia, there have lived a people we now know as the Falashas. They kept all sorts of Biblical traditions and call themselves Beta Yisrael (House of Israel). As experts began to study the matter, it became clear that these were descendants of the Jewish people who came to Africa in ancient times and intermarried. Unbeknownst to many, a percentage of them became believers in Jesus over the years. Jesus (or Yeshua, as they called Him) became a part of their identity as Jewish people. Many Falashan Jews worshipped Jesus as their Messiah and continued to practice Jewish tradition.
So often in our walks with the Lord, we become focused on what we can see, what we can hear and what we can sense in the physical realm. Like that young man, we focus on the enemy’s attacks around and about us. At times we can get so focused on our physical circumstances that we forget that the Lord has already provided for us the victory!
Why is it that some believers seem to go much deeper in their walk with God than others? I believe it has to do with a desire to pursue God and not to stop until they feel His very presence in their lives. These believers decide not to settle for anything less than a growing, vibrant relationship with God, and God honors that desire for those who seek it.
This pivotal passage of scripture, Isaiah 52 and continuing into Isaiah 53, profiles a suffering servant whom the nation of Israel would not recognize. The spiritual leaders of Yeshua’s (Jesus) day were blinded to the messianic passages which pointed to the messiah’s role as a humble servant and bearer of sins.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and University of California Los Angeles wanted to find out, “if you had to choose between more time and more money, what would it be?” While they found most respondents answered, “more money”, they also found that those who preferred “more time” were generally happier! When I read this article, it reminded me of a story, that I’d like to share.
The Lord spoke to Moses, who led the children of Israel out of Egypt to be desperately cornered with the Red sea before them and Pharaoh’s chariots advancing upon them from behind. Overwhelmed with terror they cry out to Moses, “It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” Having just miraculously escaped from the miserable life of slavery, and only beginning their new life of freedom, the children of Israel were faced with the most dire threat to their existence.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve begun a series of devotions based on the Exodus wanderings of the Children of Israel, and their tragic mistakes which we can learn from and avoid. One powerful influence common to their failures was fear.