Good and Light

 Taste and see how good the LORD is;

happy the man who takes refuge in Him!

Psalm 34:9

טַעֲמוּ וּרְאוּ, כִּי-טוֹב יְהוָה;    אַשְׁרֵי הַגֶּבֶר, יֶחֱסֶה-בּוֹ

Something new is happening from making the Hebrew letters in challah.  I am drawing nearer to God through them.  When I recently made the word `chesed` (in challah! post to follow!) , which means lovingkindness, as soon as I picked up the `chet` ח (the first letter of `chesed` חסד) , I realized this is a letter to handle with care.  This is a word that is the signature of God`s attributes.

The Hebrew words in challah in this post`s upload are `good` and `light`.  

Good=  טוב  = TOV            Light =   אור  = OHR

I haven`t done an upload yet about `chesed`, (lovingkindness), but I just had that realization about the letters. His goodness and lovingkindness will pursue us all the days of our lives...

The word there too in Psalm 23 is `Tov`, the same `good` that He proclaimed when He made the world and said each thing that was `Good`...the world He made `Good` is the `good` or `Tov` that is His attribute. 

More than food for thought, we actually taste and see how good---Tov---  the LORD is!!

Enjoy! This is a light hearted upload with a story about the first words God said, Let there be ...Light!! אור

Have a good day and let your light shine and give glory to our Father in Heaven!! Much love, Shabbat Shalom! ♡Shayndel ,d.u.a. (doing uploads as) 

Joanne`s Challah-Cast channel!

 

A new beginning

`Ohr Ha-Olam`, Light of the World

Scrolling back to the beginning!

   בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

God is faithful.  He meets us where we are.

Who would have thought, on this year when I couldn`t return home to travel to see my family in the U.S. or even to visit my daughter here in Japan,  and was feeling a sense of sadness before the holidays, not really being able to imagine being on my own to celebrate the Feasts of Simcha... and yet, and yet God... and God!!! Yes, He sees our heart and he assured me with His banner of Love and with the words that said  "You will rejoice in your festival and your joy will be complete." He sent me that word, literally, as you have seen in the posts below, on the banner that came in the box with the tent poles and sh`cach.

And after all,  it turned out to be a  a wonderful season of the Feasts--- the tent from Abraham, the challah casts with all you, and rejoicing and celebrating with new ministries that the LORD has opened the doors to in Asia and Australia....dwelling in the succah...all things new...and now we come out of the `succah`, we are ready to start again from the beginning!!

Enjoy this short upload, Scrolling back the Torah scroll to the 

beginning...

 

 

   

בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ 

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 

Genesis 1:1 

Invitation to new beginnings! 

If you haven`t read on the Torah cycle and you have had it in your heart to start, there is no better time then now, as today, this very day we are starting again in the book of Genesis!!!

 

Here is a list of Torah readings and related readings for the year 2020~2021, beginning today in Bereshit, Genesis:
HERE

 

And if you haven`t said yes to Messiah Yeshua,  I would like to share a prayer that would bring you into a new beginning in Messiah Yeshua!! He is the Torah made flesh!!! I pray at this new beginning of the Torah cycle, oh LORD, that there will be many people who will recognize the need for You in our lives.  That You are our Salvation!!!

 

Dear LORD Yeshua,

I invite you into my heart.

I receive you as my Saviour.  I want to start a new beginning with you.

I ask you to Be my Saviour and the LORD of my Life!

May this be the best beginning ever for us all!!

Much Love,

♡

Shayndel

Joanne`s Challah-Cast channel!

 PS the word in challah at the header is `OHR` which means LIGHT!! As in Let there be LIGHT!  As in Genesi 1:3, and in the photo above you can see it in `Light of the World`, as in John 8:12!!

 

 

In the Beginning

In the Beginning was the Word.

The Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.    --John 1:1

In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth.   ---Genesis 1:1

Then God said,  "Let there be light!"

and there was light.    ---Genesis 1:3

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.   ---John 1: 4

The Torah scrolls have been scrolled back to the beginning!
It is my second time setting out on the Torah cycle!
This time even as we are already starting out,  I saw Yeshua,  there,  from the Beginning.

He was there in Genesis and before everything.  He was with God in the Beginning!  Just as the Torah is one continuous scroll and goes back to the beginning after each cycle of reading, so too is the entire Word of God one continuous Word,  from the beginning, in Genesis, to the last, or Revelation.   Beginning, Revelation.  Revelation from the Beginning!

Reading from the beginning this time I am struck with how exquisite God`s planning is.  How He spoke and everything came into being.  And He sets each one into His plan. Orderly. Lovingly.

Out of all that darkness and chaos, Light!   He created the  Heavens and the Earth, and each `day` brings something else into being.  People on the sixth day, and  already they (we!)  are banished from the garden for sin and by the end of this first section, God is already planning to wipe everything and everyone away with the flood with the exception of Noah.

(post edited here)..., of staying afloat in the `ark` or `tevah`, which also means `word`,
 May the word of God and your time spent with Him and in His Love bless you and  keep you afloat in the season ahead!

Blessings and Shalom!

Love,

Shayndel

＊Related posts on this blog,
HERE and  
HERE

Note:  If you would like to start along on the weekly Parashiot Readings, please see the link to the list of readings, which is always there at the right side bar, or click  HERE! 
We are already entering the second week and the Parsha is `Noach` (Noah).

From the beginning

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.   ---Genesis 1:1

In the fall (autumn) in some places the clocks are turned back this time of year for daylight savings time.  I just saw that in Israel this is done too, and it became one hour earlier just last night!

In the cycle of God`s calendar, it is the time of the year where we roll back the Torah.   Time to begin reading and study again from the beginning.

Like many of my posts this one also expresses something I am learning and doing for the very first time, as this fist year of celebrating the Fall Feasts*  in my life in Japan continues!  

As a child, even though I was raised Jewish and went to synagogue year after year for the holidays and attended Hebrew school,  I never  understood anything about the ongoing and repeating cycle of the Torah readings.   

The Torah is read in portions each week for one year from Genesis to Deuteronomy.  Then at the last of the Fall Feasts, Simchat Torah,  we read the last Torah portion, then proceed immediately to the first chapter of Genesis, reminding us that the Torah is a circle, and never ends.   On Simchat Torah there is rejoicing with the Torah, and a celebration of getting all the way to the end.  In the congregation people even dance with the Torah, though I am not sure if that was done in our Long Island reform congregation where I attended! 
It was done in Japan though!!

Then the Torah is scrolled all the way back to the beginning!

The first Parsha, or Torah Portion, is from Genesis, which is called Breisheet in Hebrew.  Creation.  As I was flying over water on the way to Tokyo to celebrate Shemini Atzerat just before Simchat Torah,  I was looking out the window the whole plane ride.  I sensed God wanted me to see the expanse in the midst of the water, and the way He separated the waters when he formed and named the sea and sky.  Connecting back to that second day of creation...

Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water!  Let it be for separating water from water."   So God made the expanse and it separated the water that was below the expanse from the water that was over the expanse.  And it happened so. God called the expanse "sky."   --Genesis 1:6~8

I looked down at God`s creation in awe of the way the sky and the water really are separated and the clouds even float on that line of separation.  Those thousands of years ago felt close as I was filled with a giddy excitement of this Torah cycle approaching and starting anew from the beginning.  In His creation, in Genesis.  

Then on what would be the third day He said let the water below the sky be gathered together in one place and let the dry ground appear.  And it happened so. (from Genesis 1:9). 

I watched the shapes of the islands and thought of how our island nation of Japan is one of the nations who wait in anticipation for His Torah. 

The islands will wait for His Torah.   ---Isaiah 42:4

I watched the shorelines in awe of how exactly the shapes are drawn, and how the water line is clearly calculated so the water stops when it reaches the land.

when I said, 'This far you may come, but no further'
here your majestic waves will stop. '   ---Job 38:11 

Turning back the Torah doesn`t turn back time but it reminds us of the precision and plans of our Precise Creator and how everything is divided and separated, formed and calibrated on His ...Torah time!!  God`s time.  When we are all in sync with His time, agreeing to His purposes, reading the same passages and celebrating His appointed days as He commands us to do, something clicks like those calibrated wheels that you see when you look into a time piece.  As we gear up for the new year of the Parashiot, it is like  getting synchronized on the circle that goes back to creation and forward to His coming!


If, like me, you have never read the Torah on a yearly cycle, this could be the perfect time to start!! This will also be my first time to start from the beginning, as the past year I joined in sometime around the Passover and it was already well into the Exodus.  I hope this post might inspire you to start this cycle and study together!

This weeks reading was Breisheet.  The coming Shabbat will be Noach from the story of Noah.  You can click on here  to get the listing of the Parshiot for 2016-2017.  In each set of readings we see how the prophecies from the Old Testament are fulfilled in the coming of Yeshua as we read and study the portions from the Torah, Haftorah, and including readings from the Brit Chadashah (The Good News, or New Testament). 

(then He, Yeshua said...)

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.                                                            ---Revelation 22:13

 May God look upon us from the heavens and see us returning to His Torah!! May he be pleased with us and say like He did at the time of creation when there was a separation between water and water, and when there was not yet a separation between people and God, and He said at the end of the each day, `it is good.`!!

So God saw everything that He made, and behold it was very good.     ---Genesis 1:31

Note:  all the photos in this post I took from the airplane from Oita to Tokyo In two trips over the Succot and Shemeni Atzeret holidays.

Note:  If you are interested to read more about this Torah portion from Genesis,  you can find many drash, or sermons about it if you look it up.  I will share one link below from a blog I came across, it looks at the Hebrew letter Beit that begins the Breisheet and first line of Genesis from a Messianic perspective.  The writer  explains how the first letter means house, and then goes on to connect it with Yeshua and our dwelling with Him from the very beginning.  I provided the link to that article below.  Or enjoy looking for other talks on the text as you begin the year of Torah Study from the beginning! Shalom and Enjoy!:
http://jewishjewels.org/Newsletter%20Archive/IntheBeginning-Jan2006.pdf

Note:  Until my eyes were opened to the truth of Yeshua, I always knew the Fall Feasts as the `Jewish` holidays, but important note:  they are not only for Jewish people but for all God`s children!! they are for all who call upon His name, all who call upon His name in truth, both in the natural and the grafted in, we are all brothers and sisters in Yeshua!!  Yeshua came to reconcile the Jew and Gentile in Himself.  It is  beautiful to see that living truth  in a messianic congregation, where Jewish and Gentile believers  worship, read Torah, and celebrate the feasts together!!