Jewish Roots
All Scripture is God-breathed… 2 Timothy 3:16-17
As a child, I enjoyed peering through my kaleidoscope at the colorful fragments of glass as they shifted and formed beautiful mosaics with the subtle turn of the lens. What began as a jumbled mess of glass pieces turned into something incredible—once the focus shifted.
The Clues of God’s Passover
I hear many people, Jews and Christians alike, calling the festivals and assemblies of Leviticus 23 “Jewish Holidays.” And while I agree it is the Jews who reverently honor these Holy days, it is the voice of the Lord, who poignantly declares; “These are my feasts.”
What might surprise Jewish readers of the New Testament are the Israel-affirming bits that show that the Gospels are thoroughly Jewish. Jesus and his rivals argue about food laws because, well, Jews argue about food laws. They argue about how to relate to Rome because that was a contentious issue in first-century Judea. They argue together with tools all Jews recognize and honor — the Torah and the life of worship and festival known as Judaism.
So what do we do with these texts that are still in our Christian Scripture? We don’t dismiss them. We situate them historically as I have done here — as a reflection of one claimant to the legacy of Israel clawing for space against another.
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Restoration Of All Things
We believe in the biblical principle of restoration. God made everything in the world “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Yet, Adam’s sin and Satan’s rebellion caused much destruction. God’s plan of redemption not only saves us from damnation,