Passover 2011, and a little bit of history.

Here are some overdue yet necessary pics from passover 2011.

 This is me and my wife at passover held at the renaissance hotel in Charlotte, NC

Hey did you know that at the last supper da vinci wasnt invited? And did you know the last supper was actually the passover seder? Yes that crazy holiday that Jews celebrate applies to Jesus and Christians as well. Thats because Jesus was a Jew. Shocking I know! This seems crazy that I would be saying this in this way but many in church history have tried to ignore this and some in church history have tried to deny the claim spreading hate and accusing the jewish people of killing Jesus. This is a dark part of the churches history but it happened. Christian churches used to celebrate the jewish holidays alongside the Jewish people. Until the council of nicea in which our sometimes esteemed Emporer Constantine said these words..
". . .relative to the sacred festival of Easter. . . it was declared to be particularly unworthy for this holiest of all festivals to follow the custom of the Jews. We ought not therefore, to have anything in common with the Jews. We desire to separate ourselves from the detestable company of the Jews for it is surely shameful for us to hear the Jews boast that without their direction we could not keep this feast. In their blindness, they frequently celebrate two Passovers in the same year. . . How then could we follow these Jews. . . for to celebrate the Passover twice in one year is totally inadmissible ."  

 This was also the council that changed the worship day from saturday to sunday, established December 25th as the birthday of Christ, established Easter, and established the Universal (Catholic) church of the Holy Roman Empire. There is a lot of history we won't go into dealing with the way the past church treated the Jews Including accusing them of deicide and using that to get them to either renounce  their jewishness and become catholic or die. The inquisition was where the Catholic church decided to crack down on the jews who had only said they converted to save their lives but really didnt. They used torture on the Jews in order to find out the false converts and purge the church of evil.

  There is a lot of bad history between the church and the jews. First Jesus was jewish, if anything needed to be repented of it was the catholicness not jewishness. Jesus(yeshua) was raised on the Torah and lived and breathed in the judaism of his time. Second, the Jewish people didn't Kill Jesus......    Jesus willingly laid down his life for all mankind.

       So, theres a lot of bad history in the church and Its is good to see when christian churches and congregations like the one who did the passover seder embrace a Jewish messiah and the jewish roots of our faith.

       This passover I went to was one done by a local messianic Jewish congregation here in Charlotte. Messianic congregations believe in Jesus but approach him as the Jewish messiah. The leader of the congregation is Dr. Sam Nadler.

Sam is a very humorous and intelligent guy who speaks to churches and speaks at conferences all around the globe but his base is in Charlotte. His preaching is done in english but the songs that are sung and the scripture reading is done in Hebrew. They even have Davidic dancing which is said to be the same type of dancing done at the time of King David.

                     The place was crowded.........

....and the food was good...and I think I swallowed my permanent crown that night as well.(thats another story though).

   Overall it was a great experience, I learned so much about how passover relates to Jesus the messiah and the history of our faith. Theres so much info I cannot fit on a whole blog but if you have any questions visit www.hopeofisrael.info or www.wordofmessiah.org. Those are Sams websites.

If you have more questions on the history and violence between the christian church I recommend the bood "Our hands are stained with blood" By Dr. Michael L. Brown
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_49?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=our+hands+are+stained+with+blood+by+michael+brown&x=0&y=0&sprefix=our+hands+are+stained+with+blood+by+michael+brown.

By the way does anyone know how to make charoset? It is an apple dip made traditionally for passover and it is delicious.

Getting back on track.

Ever since I first visited the New York Jewish district, I have felt a deep intrigue about the jewish people and culture. I would say its more a fascination.  I have always found the language to be  very beautiful and the culture have found very fascinating. It probably has to do a lot with my christian heritage and trying to rediscover the roots of my beliefs in the hebrew language and culture of the past. My mom used to read us childrens bible stories and to me they were just stories growing up, but I have to remind myself that they werent just stories, the area that surrounds Israel and Israel itself is where these stories actually took place. I am not a zionist but I support Israel and hope for one day there being a reunification of Israel and its palestine brothers( yes I said brothers).
   These are some reasons why I am learning hebrew. I also would like to read the old testament in its original language. So I started back on my path to learning and after 4 months I am on lesson 6 but I have progressed slowly so as to not forget it. This is one of the ways I am learning Hebrew:
http://www.learnhebrewpod.com/default.asp
But I also am using a few biblical hebrew books as well as a few iphone apps to help. I also have been listening to hebrew radio a bit to hear some hebrew being spoken to better immerse myself.

There are many people who are fascinated with other cultures, they learn the language , they embrace the culture and eat the food, and even though I get a lot of grief from friends for trying to learn Hebrew I don't care, I still will. I don't see how learning hebrew is different from learning any other language or culture.... Maybe after learning Hebrew I will start learning Arabic.

A mio addict?

One of the things we take for granted is water. It seems that people only drink water if they have nothing else to drink or they just completed a 5k run. Well that was how I felt about water until mio. And I am quite an addict to it.

I have the entire collection and eagerly awaiting more flavors.

Relay for life--- bunch of litterers.

What is that? theres something in the back yard.

     Tonight I let the dog out to go pee, and I noticed Ellie(the dog) wouldn't go near the other side of our yard. Well, since I have no light on that side of the back yard I now tried to scope it out. It  had reflective parts that looked like eyes and moved. I mowed the grass yesterday before the freak storm and knew there should be nothing that I left in the yard.............So I now think I have some kind of animal in my yard.
     I went to go get a flashlight, in which being the tech savvy person I am, I HAVE NO FLASHLIGHTS!!! ( I screamed to my self quietly under my breath) you'dve( southern for you would have) done this too in my predicament. In the south we try to group as many words as possible into one word. Kinda like when my dad would say giidyyonoverhere. It meant get your butt over here so I can give you a spankin'. I should that whilst (what 2 words make the world whilst?) my dad was too lazy to actually say all of those words in a sentence, he was not too lazy to give me a spanking.
      So there I was, no flashlights with a possible animal in my yard, a dog who wouldn't come in and its pitch black out there except for the reflection on whatever was out there that looked like eyes.
I dug through my tool box and found a stick up light which worked enough to see the object but still couldnt tell what it was. So I threw tennis balls at it. Btw this works for anything where you want to know if its dead or alive. (thats a special life tip for ya compliments of moi) So when it didnt move I jumped through the window to outside and picked it up......look what I found.

 Yes, balloons had been released for some relay for life event and had found its landing spot in my back yard. I think that relay for life should be where you release balloons and then you run to where they land and pick them up. That way you still get the few miles of running in and your organization wont be dropping balloon droppings all over peoples yards. :)

 
   

HailStorm 2011

Yesterday,  an unprecedented event happened in Charlotte. It hailed! What is hail you ask well... here is the definition from weather.about.com

Definition: Hail is a form of precipitation that falls from the sky as pellets of ice. The pellets can range in size from small pea-sized pellets, to hailstones as large as grapefruits. Hail is especially damaging to crops. In the central US, where many hail storms are reported each year, delicate wheats and other crops are often ruined. Annually, hail can cause over 1 billion dollars in damages.  http://weather.about.com/od/h/g/hail.htm

My iphone couldnt take any pictures of the hail but I got some great shots of the sky!

      This line of storms had a lot of circulation in it and while taking the last pic the darker part was spinning and actually started moving toward the ground. ( this was during a tornado warning I might add) so I was a little scared but excited cause I love thunderstorms even though they scare the bajeepers out of me (yes I know I just made that word up but hey it works for my application.  

This relates to my blog theme because Thunderstorms are something we give little credit to. If a storm happens we just go inside and go about our day and get busy with something else but storms like these demand attention, they demand we stop whatever we are doing and pay attention. Most people say that they never hear God speak to them, but what if he does and we are just too busy with our lives to pay attention? .... or we are so selfish that we always think God is speaking but hes speaking to those who really need to hear him. I think God does speak through storms like these. In them he says that he is powerful, he is the only one to be worshipped, and he is a dangerous foe to have. Its better to have the maker of the storm on your side.

I was reminded about the passage we studied in church from Exodus 20 after God gave the people of Israel the Ten Commandments:

¹⁸ When the people heard the thunder and the loud blast of the ram’s horn, and when they saw the flashes of lightning and the smoke billowing from the mountain, they stood at a distance, trembling with fear.

 ¹⁹ And they said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen. But don’t let God speak directly to us, or we will die!”
 ²⁰ “Don’t be afraid,” Moses answered them, “for God has come in this way to test you, and so that your fear of him will keep you from sinning!”
 ²¹ As the people stood in the distance, Moses approached the dark cloud where God was.

Exodus 20:18-21(NLT)

Maybe its a good thing that we fear God every once in a while. Thunderstorms and hurricanes and other natural disasters seem to knock us off of our pedestals and back into our rightful place - recognizing the frailty and the shortness of what we call life. It gets us to put into perspective everything we hold dear and important, and asks us if they are really that important to us, and it gets people like you and me in the right  potter-clay relationship with God. Not that God is at all distant or any less loving or forgiving but rather we should know our God isnt a wimp, hes not a coward, and he isnt afraid of anybody or anything. He is awe-some.

Chewbacca mustve spoke hebrew

 So, Im in trying to study and pronounce some hebrew words like this one:

a-ta ro-zze? which means Do you want?

This is all fine and dandy except the native speaker rolls the r in ro-zze. Since I first took french and spanish in middle school I have not ever been able to roll my r's. I pronounce my R's like pirates do, you know like these guys:

Anyway my wife said that when she took french it took her forever to learn how to roll her R's and when she tried to teach me how to do it I just ended up sounding like chewbacca. oi vey

on drums and volunteering

Ok, So I am getting the hang of blogging. They say the hard part of blogging is getting past the first few blogs and creating that habit of it, well We will see.

Today was good, today I tried out for my church to play drums.We played for about 40 minutes or so. Different songs and a few that I werent ready for but I think the worship leader was impressed and he said that I was a great drummer and that he would add me to the roster. I have been playing drums for years and have never had the opportunity to really play for a church I wanted to stay a member of until now. So many churches are like refrigerators

source: http://www.blavish.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/LG%20interactive%20refrigerator.jpg

(thats not my refrigerator)

anyway,

So many churches feel they need to collect all the christians in the world and save them till Yeshua(Jesus) comes back -----well maybe thats not how a church should act.

Our church isn't like that

 and I have learned a bunch from them

Maybe God doesnt want to be found in a huge church full of money and tvs and rock bands and fancy

things. Maybe God would rather be found in places like here:

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/02DYcOo9AL40W/610x.jpg

All Im saying is that society says that we can only find God in a peaceful place or in a church but Maybe thats  wrong. maybe the hidden thing is that God can be found anywhere and not just in churches or on the mountaintops. 

A few weeks ago our church got to join another in washing the feet of immigrants that live in the greater Charlotte area, as well as giving them new shoes. This was an extremely humbling experience. But the most humbling part of that was to find out that the person who is in charge of that has a law degree from Georgetown and he gave up a very successful law career to help these immigrants which means making a lot less money and decreasing his standard of living substantially in order to help these immigrants. Very Humbling.

In that experience I experienced God more than I ever did at any mega super church I have been to.

Thank you for reading my posts, Shalom