Can we do תפילות prayers for:
Ardelle and Cal?
That through them The האור Light, רפואה The Healing and The ואהבה Love of ישועת יהוה Yeshuath YHWH may come back to הארץ The Land of Israel?Shalom!
I heard about something really wonderful this week that I wanted to pass along as an idea. A group of teenage friends who connect at Feasts decided to do a weekly Shabbat Bible study conference call. They take turns leading it and choosing the subject. Fantastic! The kids are very excited about it and the parents are thrilled.
This week our Torah reading entitled "The Life of Sarah," covers the deaths of Avraham and Sarah. As you read the story, however, there seems to be less of an emphasis on death and more on a celebration of their lives:
Bereshith 23:1 And the life of Sarah is a hundred and twenty and seven years -- years of the life of Sarah;
Bereshith 25:8 Then Avraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, aged and satisfied, and was gathered to his people.
The verses point to fulfilled lives. But how difficult had their lives really been? Chief Rabbi of England, Sir Jonathan Sacks writes:
Abraham and Sarah were commanded by God to leave everything that was familiar: their land, their home, their family, and travel to an unknown land. No sooner had they arrived than they were forced to leave because of famine. Twice, Abraham's life was at risk when, driven into exile, he worried that he would be killed so that the local ruler could take Sarah into his harem. Sarah herself had to say that she was Abraham's sister, and had to suffer the indignity of being taken into a stranger's household.
Then there was the long wait for a child, made even more painful by the repeated Divine promise that they would have as many children as the stars of the sky or the dust of the earth. Then came the drama of the birth of Ishmael to Sarah's servant Hagar. This aggravated the relation between the two women, and eventually Abraham had to send Hagar and Ishmael away. One way or another, this was a source of pain to all four people involved.
Then there was the agony of the binding of Isaac. Abraham was faced with the prospect of losing the person most precious to him, the child he had waited for so long. One way or another, neither Abraham nor Sarah had an easy life. Theirs were lives of trial, in which their faith was tested at many points...seven times Abraham had been promised the land...yet by the time Sarah dies, Abraham has no land at all, and he is forced to prostrate himself before the local Hittites and beg for permission to acquire even a single field with a cave in which to bury his wife. Even then he has to pay what is clearly a massively inflated price: four hundred silver shekels....
Then, in relation to children, Abraham is promised four times: "I will make you into a great nation." ....Yet he had to wait so long for even a single son by Sarah that when God insisted that she would indeed have a son, both Abraham and Sarah laughed...
One way or another, whether we think of children or the land - the two key Divine promises to Abraham and Sarah - the reality fell far short of what they might have felt entitled to expect.
That, however, is precisely the meaning and message of Chayei Sarah. In it Abraham does two things: he buys the first plot in the land of Canaan, and he arranges for the marriage of Isaac. One field and a cave was, for Abraham, enough for the text to say that "God had blessed Abraham with everything." ...enough for Abraham to die in peace.
...God Himself said of Abraham, "For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what He has promised him." (Gen. 18:19). The meaning of this is clear. If you ensure that your children will continue to live for what you have lived for, then you can have faith that they will continue your journey until eventually they reach the destination. Abraham did not need to see all the land in Jewish hands, nor did he need to see the Jewish people become numerous. He had taken the first step. He had begun the task, and he knew that his descendants would continue it. He was able to die serenely because he had faith in God and faith that others would complete what he had begun. The same was surely true of Sarah...to be happy does not mean that you have everything you want or everything you were promised. It means, simply, to have done what you were called on to do, to have made a beginning, and then to have passed on the baton to the next generation. (end of quote)
This all reminds me of the verse -
Philippians 1:6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Yeshua the Messiah.
Shabbat Shalom!
Ardelle
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