Hate Vs. State

Hate Vs. State

Does religion teach us to love hate?Israel is under constant siege.  And I’m not referring to the over 1,000 rockets fired at it or the axe-wielding murderers in the neighborhood.  Amazingly, despite the day and night contrast clearly visible in the region, there is a rising global tide of so-called anti-Zionism – or anti-Israeli sentiment.  The drumbeat is growing so loud, and becoming so persistent, against the world’s only Jewish state, that it brings to mind the Anti-Semitism that led to pogroms in Russia and eventually the Holocaust.

In honor of the Jewish Sabbath, I decided to write on this topic today. The random Virtues card I came up with was Courage.  How apropos for this young nation which is establishing itself in the most volatile region on earth. Kudos to them for expressing this virtue.

I understand fully that the plight of the Palestinians is a major reason given for an Anti-Israeli stance.  Here’s an article that illustrates the not-so-subtle bias that Israel is responsible for the Statelessness of the Palestinians.  The article, however, sets out a clear premise that if more Palestinians were focused on building a state for themselves, vs. destroying Israel, they would long ago have achieved this goal.  The absence of a Palestinian State is clearly not Israel’s fault.  A better case could be made for the opposite, that Israel is more interested in a stable Palestinian State than the Palestinians themselves. So why is everyone against Israel?

Flag of Tel AvivNumerous prophecies call out that in the “last days” or the “end time” Israel will stand alone, with armies gathered against Jerusalem.  Have you considered that Modern day Israel might just be a fulfillment of these prophecies, including  Isaiah 11:11-12?  The one about the “Ensign to the Nations”? “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

Do you have the courage to take a step back and consider the global situation today in the light of Biblical Prophecy?  Do you have the courage to cast away hate, and replace it with love?  A love for all peoples, and a desire for peace, along with a desire for truth and justice, will provide a path forward.  Focusing on Virtues will open our hearts to that which will lead us forward.

 

“Why do you do this”, you ask?

“Why do you do this”, you ask?

My 5-year old daughter woke me up at 3:30 this morning.

Thus roused from slumber, finding sleep again proved elusive. But the early bird gets the worm, and in a pre-dawn stillness punctuated with birds chirping outside my home-office window, a suitable metaphor to launch this blog finally dawned on me.

Many ask what drove me to write the book that gave birth to the blog. Perhaps they didn’t read the preface, or didn’t remember it, or didn’t believe it. Or maybe, given that we live in a fractured, ADD-trending, media driven culture, they want a soundbite. Fair enough, for without a good sound bite, it’s difficult to write a decent blog.

And while it sometimes feels like everything is different today, in many ways things haven’t changed. Sound-bites have always been powerful, and the best ones have survived. A sound-bite from the Savior provides the answer to the conundrum of explaining, succinctly, the reason behind my writing.

In Matthew 7:7 Christ stated: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

That verse neatly sums up a self-evident truth to those of faith, which is also the Genesis of The People of the Sign.  The answers are out there, and we need to be seeking them.

We may have to ask more than once, or more than a thousand times.

Our knuckles may be bloody from knocking.

We may have to overturn every stone, within minefields in countries whose names we can’t even spell.

But the answers are not being withheld from us.

The place we are may just be very far from where the answers are found.

We may be heading in the wrong direction.

We may not know what it is we are really looking for.

But in the asking, and the seeking, and the knocking, there is already wisdom. And by obtaining wisdom, we can refine the questions we ask.

As the darkness begins to yield, outside my window, to the arrival of light, another soundbite comes to mind, one which frames the ask/seek/knock picture by revealing its opposite.  For if we are to learn/find/gain entry, we must, indeed, ask/seek/knock.  And that is why the closing offering, of this first blog, is a sound bite that is another self-evident truth.

He who knows everything can never learn anything.

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