Born again

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. - John 1:12-13

I was not born again because I one day decided that this is the best way to live. Neither did my flesh come up with the brilliant solution that I should be born again. I was not born again because someone out of the blue decided to 'evangelize me' or to increase the number of his congregation. It wasn't even because a Church council decided to approve my request to become member in their Church or decided that I was changed enough and thus deserve to be baptized. Nothing like that!
Adonai carried me within Himself, not for 9 months like a pregnant woman would, but for years and years. It's been hard for Him because I wasn't an easy burden, for my sins have made it hard for Him, but He did not give up on me. He waited... and when I finally was ready to be born, meaning to know His Truth, He gave birth to me and not without pain. There are people that are born again easily, but I was not an easy birth and Kadosh Baruch Hu (The Holy One, blessed is He) endured a lot of pain to bring me to life and because He knows how He struggled to give birth to me, He does not give up on me, not even when I fail to understand what it is that He is doing.
What I am today does not resemble anything known and more than once I've heard people asking me 'what are you? you don't believe like that denomination or that one!' My answer is that I would resemble a denomination if a denomination would have given birth to me and if a set of principles would have given birth to me then I would resemble a certain school of thought, but that's not the case and because I was given birth by Adonai the only One entitled to expect me to resemble Him, is only Him.
It was not a denomination that carried me when my heart was so heavy that nothing could lift it... only The Holy One of Israel. He didn't send anyone else but He, The King of kings came personally and gave birth to me in a pain that broke His heart. He cleansed me. He cut my umbilical cord. He wrapped me up in a holy cloth. He fed me with milk. He stayed up late with me when I was sick with self disappointment. He stood by my side when I was crying my heart out and He stood by my side when I was laughing. He brought me back to life and only He can expect me to resemble Him. And that is my greatest desire: to resemble Him so much that if someone should look at me they would know I take after my Father.
I know that at this point I resemble Him so little that He always needs to reassure me 'yes, you are My daughter!' but I hope that one day there will be no need for words, because the resemblance will be obvious.

Bat Melech בת מלך
 Cristina כריסטינה

Lord, liar or lunatic?

“Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world, who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.

“One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned; the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.

“Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is ‘humble and meek’ and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings.

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

(Mere Christianity - C. S. Lewis)

and it has not appeared as yet what we will be...

“God changes caterpillars in butterflies, sand into pearls and coals into diamonds, using only pressure and time, He is working on you too!”

Most of the time I feel sick of myself and my human nature. I seem to have an opinion about every person I meet and I do not need more than five minutes to label anyone (most of the time the wrong label), but the minute someone offers an opinion about me (and God forbids for it not to be “the right one”) I am indignant.

I expect everyone to fulfil the Scriptures to the letter and I seem to know for sure that they have no excuse if they get it wrong. But when it comes to me I always find an explanation as to why I couldn’t or I didn’t…

I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible for me to love my neighbour as myself, to protect him as I do myself and find him excuses as I find for myself. I am sick of the way I do not know how to love…

I have come to say as the Psalmist “But I am like a worm instead of a man” (Psalm 22:6) and I am not saying this as a form of false humility, I actually feel this way. But Adonai in His goodness always reminds me of the words from Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 41:14 “Don’t be afraid even though you are weak as a worm, I myself will help you”

I am not contesting the fact that I am but a worm for now…nor do I believe that if I start to proclaim that I am a butterfly I will become one. I aspire to become a butterfly, but I am not there yet and I can tell that by the way that I crawl. Do I despair because of it? No! And this is not because I trust in my ability to become a butterfly, but because I trust in the One who did not despise my weak beginning and still does not despise it even if I am about to start again for the thousandth time. I don’t despair not even when I begin to feel but another face in the crowd…a grain in the sand among the other billions of grains, because I know He dressed me in Himself and He won’t let go until I become a pearl in Him. Is it pleasant to be isolated? No. Is it pleasant for you to be the one who’s different than the rest of grains of sand, for you to be the one not allowed to be like the rest, not to have fun like the rest and have the same things they do? No. Is it pleasant to be squeezed from all sides until there is nothing left of you? No! Is it worth it? ABSOLUTELY! Because I know that when He will finish His work in me no one will ever call me again “grain of sand” but “pearl”.

I don’t like my state right now, but I understood that it is ok for me not to like it because I was not born to but be a worm, a grain of sand or charcoal even though that is how I look right now. I am in the process of becoming a butterfly, a pearl, a diamond…

By its nature charcoal tarnishes everything it ever comes in contact with. That is how I was for a long time, but I have been touched by The One who instead of getting dirty when He touched me, He cleaned me instead. I don’t know how. I still find it hard to think of myself as a piece of charcoal but I know that by faith when He looks at me He sees a diamond.


Bat Melech בת מלך
 Cristina כריסטינה
translated by Emanuela Robinson

You are more

There's a girl in the corner 

With tear stains on her eyes

 From the places she's wandered 

And the shame she can't hide 

She says, "How did I get here? I'm not who I once was. 

And I'm crippled by the fear 

That I've fallen too far to love

" But don't you know who you are, 

What's been done for you? 

Yeah don't you know who you are?

 You are more than the choices that you've made,

 You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, 

You are more than the problems you create, 

You've been remade. 

Well she tries to believe it 

That she's been given new life

 But she can't shake the feeling 

That it's not true tonight 

She knows all the answers

And she's rehearsed all the lines 

And so she'll try to do better

 But then she's too weak to try

 But don't you know who you are? 

You are more than the choices that you've made, 

You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, 

You are more than the problems you create, 

You've been remade. 

You are more than the choices that you've made,

 You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, 

You are more than the problems you create, 

You've been remade.

 'Cause this is not about what you've done, 

But what's been done for you. 

This is not about where you've been, 

But where your brokenness brings you to 

This is not about what you feel, 

But what He felt to forgive you, 

And what He felt to make you loved. 

You are more than the choices that you've made,

 You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,

 You are more than the problems you create, 

You've been remade. 

You are more than the choices that you've made,

 You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,

 You are more than the problems you create, 

You've been remade. 

You've been remade 

You've been remade. 

You've been remade. 

You've been remade.

Complete song

You wouldn’t praise if you didn’t know how to curse,
Only those who cry know how to smile
You wouldn’t love today if it wasn’t for your groaning
If it wasn’t for your crying you would not carry light in your eyes.
If you didn’t bind your own wound.

Your hand would not anoint the wounds of strangers.
You wouldn’t yearn for pieces of heaven
If you would not carry a shard of hell in you.
Because you can’t rise from the dust without falling face down in the bitterness of it.
And if you’re brought to live in today’s song
It is because you were dying in last night’s tear.

 

---- written by Rady Gyr

---------translated by Emanuela Robinson

The other side of the Cross

Pesach message

Bat Melech בת מלך
Cristina כריסטינה

Sick

Hamas, in their own words from memritvvideos on GodTube.

Chag Purim Sameach! חג פורים שמח

We will never be never be:
Anything but true and always straight up, bold and fearless Jews!



Bat Melech בת מלך
Cristina כריסטינה

I am growing

For a while now, I seem to have developed a certain obsession for mountains and the way they can be climbed, so I ended up reading a presentation by Brian Cavanaugh on Edmund Hillary and loved what he wrote:

“Sir Edmund Hillary was the first man to climb Mount Everest. On May 29, 1953 he scaled the highest mountain then known to man-29,000 feet straight up. He was knighted for his efforts.

The happy ending seemed to have easily obtained. However, until we read his book, High Adventure, we don’t understand that Hillary had to grow into this success.

You see, in 1952 he attempted to climb Mount Everest, but failed. A few weeks later a group in England asked him to address its members.

Hillary walked on stage to a thunderous applause. The audience was recognizing an attempt at greatness, but Edmund Hillary saw himself as a failure. He moved away from the microphone and walked to the edge of the platform.

He made a fist and pointed at a picture of the mountain. He said in a loud voice, “Mount Everest, you beat me the first time, but I’ll beat you the next time because you’ve grown all you are going to grow… but I’m still growing!”

I find strength in the thought that I was not born completely developed into the greatness of what I can be. I find comfort that not even the second time was I born completely developed into what I can be, and what I am to be has not yet been shown. I don’t even know myself what I am capable of. But I know I can grow. And if I come across something higher than me, I am the daughter of The Most High and I can grow high and above my circumstances. My mountains have not yet found out how high I can grow. I don’t fully understand it myself yet, but I am eager to find out.

There is a quote by an unknown author, which says that if you want to see the rainbow you must put up with a little rain first. I truly believe that if we are ready to get wet by the rain we will also have the blessing of seeing the rainbow with our own eyes. I believe that climbing a mountain 29,000 feet high begins with a first step, because you never just find yourself on the top. I believe it takes a lot of stubbornness not to give up even if you would find yourself slipping back to the valley for the hundredth thousand time. I don’t believe the human mind is able to fully perceive what Adonai put inside those who believed in Yeshua’s sacrifice. I believe the same power that raised Him from the dead lives in me and such strength can only grow, not to lift me up or to fulfill my needs, but for His sake.

For His sake to climb my mountains the same way He walked my valleys. Perhaps it sounds crazy and impossible, but it is in now way crazier than Holiness itself scooping down in my dirt to pick me up from there.

I believe with all my heart we were not saved solely to have a chair reserved in a church or another. But we were saved to grow in the likeness of the One who saved us, and with the same strength and trust to build up His Kingdom, not only to follow our personal goals and needs. If we are not growing, we’re not stagnant but we are going down. And it is of no use to us to just believe if we don’t conquer any ground in our lives. A buried gift is of no use to the One who gave it to me. Because He gave me that gift in complete trust that He made me in His likeness, built from something capable of growth and to bring light. No one lights a candle only hide it away, but one puts a candle somewhere where it can light the whole house. Mountains come along on our paths in order to lift our light higher, not to crush us with their immensity.

To the one who will overcome He will give the crown of life. Not to the ones who will overcome sleep during lengthy and boring sermons. Not to the ones who will manage to stand up until the end of a song or a prayer. No! To the ones who will overcome shame and unworthiness and will not give up climbing and getting closer to The Holy One. To the ones who will overcome all the things that tempt them to mediocrity and will stand up for their King, and for His sake will help others to climb also.

Even if you fell down more than you can count, I know that I know that I know that every fall is necessary to teach you where not to put your foot again or what corner or rock to no longer grab in your climb. Adonai has no benefit if you just sit there fallen and feeling guilty! He has no benefit from you feeling sorry and staying away from Him in shame! Stand up, shake the dust off your clothes and try again, because all He wants is to see you grow. We owe Him at least this: to stand up after we fall, not to marinate in tears of guilt. I am not the center of His Kingdom, the "I" who sometimes succeeds sometimes not. He is the center of His Kingdom, and it is Him who can knight you and me for climbing the highest mountains there are.

Bat Melech בת מלך

Cristina כריסטינה

Translated by Emma

Still

Does it hurt you eyes Adonai, to look at me?
If I drown in darkness, can You still see me?
If I get lost again, do You still want to find me?
And if again I return homeless to Your home, do You receive me?

If i get scattered by fear, do You still want to gather me?
If despair ties me, will You still untie me?
If I try looking for excuses do You still want to understand them?
And if You see others better than me, do You still choose me?

Do You still cry because it hurts to see me crying?
Do You still run to catch me if You see me falling?
Do You still hear me calling even if You don't see me talking?
If I stopped and I don't know where I am, do You still wait for me dreaming?

Even If You got tired, Adonai, continue to look at me,
Still search for me, find me, receive me,
Still gather me, untie me, understand me,
Still choose me, catch me, hear me,
Still dream of me... still believe that I'll return and wait for me!

Bat Melech בת מלך
Cristina כריסטינה

I know

I’ve always known that Adonai loves people. I’ve always known that He is merciful and kind and just and good. I don’t know why or how, but I’ve always known it. Maybe it’s because I heard it said so many times that I got to know it for a fact, or maybe because I wanted to believe that even though what I saw around me disproved that fact. Either way, I knew what He is suppose to be like and every time something happened that challenged my so called belief, I would end up a mess, not knowing what to think of Adonai any more. I’d come up with lines like ‘I know you are a good God, so why? Why do You allow this to happen?’ and every time I had to accept the fact that there is no answer. But I was wrong.

In Judaism there is a saying that if you ask the wrong question you cannot expect the right answer, so I had to conclude that my questions were silly, not because they were questioning God and that’s a ‘no, no’, but because I had wrong expectations.

I didn’t understand that my knowledge of His attributes was just knowledge until He taught me.

So, if I say today that God is good, it means that I’ve been more than a thousand times in a place where He could have ignored me because of my unfaithfulness, but He chose to show me goodness.

If I say today that God is merciful, that means that I have been pitiful in His eyes more times than I can count, but He chose to show mercy to this silly child of His.

If I say today that God is slow in anger, it means that I gave Him reasons to get angry with me dozens of times, yet He chose not to be angry.

If I say today that God is a loving God, it most certainly does not mean that He was nice to me, but it means that He found enough strength in His heart to love me and love me until death, not with words or songs or embraces, but dying in my place and loving me even from beyond the grave, so much so that He resurrected for me.

If I say today that God is forgiving, it’s not because I’ve learned by heart the ‘4 steps to get to heaven’ but because I was in need of forgiveness countless times and every time He looked at me and couldn’t bear the thought that I am tormented by the guilt of sin, so He cleansed me every time.

If I know today that God never lets me go it’s not because I heard it in a song, but because I fell so many times that no one in this world or the next would ever have hoped for me again, but He was always there, always waiting that I would hope in Him enough to get up and keep going.

If I say today that God is faithful, it’s because no one has ever been as unfaithful to Him as I was, yet He always… always remained faithful to me.

Adonai is good! Adonai is merciful! Adonai is kind and graceful! Adonai is loving! Adonai is forgiving! Adonai is slow in anger! Adonai is faithful!

People look at a tsunami hitting a country or the fact that there are wars and innocent children die and they decide that there is no way that God can be good, but God doesn’t perform shows for the world to be in owe, He doesn’t do things to impress the crowds, but for the individual, so that no one could ever say ‘yes, we are all just a sea of faces to Him’ but so that every one would know that God reveals His love to each one as if it were the only one in the world.

Bat Melech בת מלך
Cristina כריסטינה

Unlike any other

Listen to me, house of Ya`akov, and all the remnant of the house of Yisra'el, that have been borne [by Me] from their birth, that have been carried from the womb; and even to old age I am He, and even to gray hairs will I carry you. I have made, and I will bear; yes, I will carry, and will deliver. To whom will you liken Me and make Me equal, and compare Me that we may be like? – Yeshayahu/ Isaiah 46:3-5

Adonai decided to carry me even from before I was born, even before He could benefit from me, even before I got to choose right or wrong and even before I got to sadden His heart, although He knew me well… He chose me even before I got to promise Him that I will follow after Him. He carried me on His shoulder until I was able to walk on my own and then observing that my steps were slowed by many burdens, He supported me. I got so used to be carried and supported, that sometimes I took that for granted and being blinded by this world didn’t help me either. So it was hard to train my mind and heart to understand that if I stand, it’s because He won’t let me fall – if I breathe it’s because He never seizes to whisper in my darkness ‘breathe!’ – if I don’t get blind it’s because He is my Light and if I live it’s because He lives within me.

I tried to compare Him to familiar things from my own limited world, so that I could understand Him more. I tried to think of Him as a father, then as a lover, or a hero, or deliverer, but all these are as incomplete as my understanding.

To whom will I liken Him so I would understand His heart? If I compare Him to an earthly father, even if I would think of the best father there is, a father cannot carry you forever because his time with you and his life is limited, how could a father carry you until your hair turns gray? Adonai’s fatherly figure in my life is limited by my understanding of what a father is.

Compare Him to a lover? A human can love you only conditionally… his/her love is always conditioned by time, or circumstances, or failures, or even successes and the dreams that keep changing. If I would have to consider even the greatest love in history, it still doesn’t help me understand His love.

Should I compare Him to a hero? A hero can save the day once and then it’s up to you to save yourself. Even if I would compare Him to the bravest hero there is, I still wouldn’t understand how much courage He used to die for me, to resurrect for me, to ascend to the heavens for me all the while hoping that my blind heart will see beyond thousands of years that He is everything… He hoped against all odds that my deaf ears will hear beyond all the space that separates us that He loves me.

To whom shall I compare Him? There is no one in any dimension or book, or dream or reality that is like Him. The heavens cannot contain Him let alone my heart. He’s got countless angels and heavenly beings that praise Him and their light would blind these eyes made of flesh, still He humbles Himself to support someone like me who is not even worthy to look upon His majesty. He never gets tired to lift me from my failures, He never gets tired of hoping, He never gets tired of loving me and support me and if I hear it or not, He never stops calling me beyond time and space to tell me ‘I love you’.

I won’t compare You to anyone anymore, Adonai, my King. You are everything to me. I am from You, through You and for You and no matter how much I treasure other things, You Adonai… You are thousands of miles higher than anything I may consider high.

Bat Melech בת מלך Cristina כריסטינה

Breathing Life

The LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Bereishit/ Genesis 2:7

Adonai created the man and because He loved the man, He didn’t tie Adam to Himself with an umbilical cord, forcing Adam to depend on Him, but Adonai created Adam with the a will of his own, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. A soul that can think and feel on its own, a soul that would be able to breath on it’s own after that first breath. But Adam didn’t understand that his ‘lungs’ have been created to breath only in the presence of the Holy One, so he tried breathing the toxic air of sin, which lead to his death and the degradation of the whole world, thus making the air unbreathable for all humans. The Creator, seeing His creation’s suffering, became moved with pity and so decided to make a way for humans to breath again. Nothing could change the world’s atmosphere and purify its air, but Yeshua was sent by The Father, to become a breathing device, that anyone that chooses Him, can benefit from clean air. Yeshua didn’t come to change the whole world, but only those that would want to be changed by Him. And the way change occurs, is by spending time in the Word of God which has been inspired with Life (2 Timothy 3:16), just like Adam was when he took that first breath that gave him life.

Bat Melech בת מלך
Cristina כריסטינה

Obsession

“Does he not see my ways and count my every step?” Job 31:4

Adonai is obsessed with man. I don’t make this statement easily, quite the opposite, if there would be a stronger word than “obsession” to describe the way He feels about us, I would use that word.
One of the definitions of obsession is: inadequate image or idea, constantly present in ones consciousness, abnormally and persistently; tormenting preoccupation. I am the inadequate image unfit for His holiness, constantly present in His mind, up to becoming a tormenting preoccupation for Him. I don’t know why He loves me in this almost insane way, but I don’t even think I need to understand. What I know is that I am always before His eyes, to compensate for the fact that I can’t see Him. He always listens to me to compensate for me not being able to hear Him. He always holds me to compensate for me not being able to touch Him. He is always near to compensate for the distance that I feel. He always comforts me to compensate that I feel Him against me. He is my Father to compensate for the fact that I feel orphaned. He is my road to compensate for me feeling lost.. He is my everything, to compensate for me not having anything…
He camps His angels around me (Psalm 34:7) as if He would guard His most precious. He engraved the palms of His hands with me (Isaiah 49:16) so that I would understand that He loves me.
He waits after me on my ways not His, until He come s to know them well, but He still doesn’t give up on me. He gathers every tear and safeguards it, though many of the tears I cried were against Him. But He knows the pain that caused them so He does not despise it. He counts every step that I take and He knows exactly how many steps there are between me and my dream, between me and Him… And He never quits whispering to me to carry on walking. He never grows tired to believe for me, He never grows tired to hope for me, He never grows tired to pick me up, to guide me, to forgive me, to have me. A man may love, but if the subject of his love is consistently faulty he grows tired of his love, but God is not the same. “He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. “ (Isaiah 42:4a)
My hope does not lay in the fact that one day I will hold my head high before Him, my hope lays in the love that He has for me. That love great enough to motivate Him to not give up on me until he will establish justice on this earth that is me.

Bat Melech בת מלך
Cristina כריסטינה

Translated by Emma to whom I am really grateful