Yom Kippur

…In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls, and you shall not do any work … For on that day he shall provide atonement for you to cleanse you from all your sins before the L-RD. -Leviticus 16:29-30

This is post is courtesy of www.jewfaq.org     

Yom Kippur is probably the most important holiday of the Jewish year. Many Jews who do not observe any other Jewish custom will refrain from work, fast and/or attend synagogue services on this day. Yom Kippur occurs on the 10th day of Tishri. The holiday is instituted at Leviticus 23:26 et seq.

The name “Yom Kippur” means “Day of Atonement,” and that pretty much explains what the holiday is. It is a day set aside to “afflict the soul,” to atone for the sins of the past year. In Days of Awe, I mentioned the “books” in which G-d inscribes all of our names. On Yom Kippur, the judgment entered in these books is sealed. This day is, essentially, your last appeal, your last chance to change the judgment, to demonstrate your repentance and make amends.

As I noted in Days of Awe, Yom Kippur atones only for sins between man and G-d, not for sins against another person. To atone for sins against another person, you must first seek reconciliation with that person, righting the wrongs you committed against them if possible. That must all be done before Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur is a complete Sabbath; no work can be performed on that day. It is well-known that you are supposed to refrain from eating and drinking (even water) on Yom Kippur. It is a complete, 25-hour fast beginning before sunset on the evening before Yom Kippur and ending after nightfall on the day of Yom Kippur. The Talmud also specifies additional restrictions that are less well-known: washing and bathing, anointing one’s body (with cosmetics, deodorants, etc.), wearing leather shoes (Orthodox Jews routinely wear canvas sneakers under their dress clothes on Yom Kippur), and engaging in sexual relations are all prohibited on Yom Kippur.

As always, any of these restrictions can be lifted where a threat to life or health is involved. In fact, children under the age of nine and women in childbirth (from the time labor begins until three days after birth) are not permitted to fast, even if they want to. Older children and women from the third to the seventh day after childbirth are permitted to fast, but are permitted to break the fast if they feel the need to do so. People with other illnesses should consult a physician and a rabbi for advice.

Most of the holiday is spent in the synagogue, in prayer. In Orthodox synagogues, services begin early in the morning (8 or 9 AM) and continue until about 3 PM. People then usually go home for an afternoon nap and return around 5 or 6 PM for the afternoon and evening services, which continue until nightfall. The services end at nightfall, with the blowing of the tekiah gedolah, a long blast on the shofar. See Rosh Hashanah for more about the shofar and its characteristic blasts.

It is customary to wear white on the holiday, which symbolizes purity and calls to mind the promise that our sins shall be made as white as snow (Is. 1:18). Some people wear a kittel, the white robe in which the dead are buried.

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The Miracle of the Human Person

Every human being who is now, will be or ever has been is a miracle.  The co-workers, family members and friends with whom you trafficked today are, every one of them, wonders beyond belief.  We are all—regardless of color, creed or cult—made in the image of God.  There is no such thing as an ordinary person.

C.S. Lewis, writing in his essay “The Weight of Glory” says this, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ‘ordinary’ people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

Our society, especially here in the West, is enamored of celebrity.  I don’t quite know how to account for it.  Perhaps it is, in some weird way, a seeking after God, power embodied in fame.  The Kardashian sisters are lovely women but they are no more a miracle than your boss, the clerk at the store down the street or your friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart greeter.

Ask yourself this one question:  “How do I treat those who have absolutely nothing by which I can, knowingly, be benefited?”

Tomorrow, when you stop by the gas station on the way to work, remember you are looking into the eyes of creatures made a little lower than the angels, indeed a little lower than God (Psalm 8:5; Hebrews 2:7).

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The Hard Work Variable In Success

If you stop by The Upside often, you’ll know that I mentor young leaders about once a week.  A handful of guys in their twenties meet with me and we discuss leadership, family, career and steps to success.  We had a great meeting today.

A couple of these men work between 90-100 hours a week.

No, that wasn’t a typo.

90-100 hours every week, holding down multiple jobs.

You simply cannot expect to advance in your career, increase your income and become exceptional in your vocations and avocations without putting time into them.  A lot of time.

There are no shortcuts.  Those who are “getting rich quick” with cheap moneymaking schemes will eventually lose.  Being clever is not necessarily the mark of being a professional.  Nor is it a benchmark of character.

These guys earn my respect.  They are putting out to get ahead for their families—multiple jobs, college and vocational schooling.  And they carve out a couple of hours each week to meet and be challenged.

I’ve long admired the cultural, economic and vocational achievements of the Jewish people.  Jews make up less that 1% of the world’s population and yet have won almost 25% of all Nobel Prizes awarded since 1901.

This is due in part to a sober understanding that to get ahead and make an impact in the world takes an enormous amount of focus and hard work over many years.  The Jewish people have understood this as well as any people group in history.

God initially set the bar for humanity when He said, “Six days you shall labor and do your work.  The seventh is a Sabbath (rest) to the Lord your God.”  The Hebrew day was a twelve hour day.  That alone—as my pastor Kirk Gilchrist has pointed out a number of times—comprises 72 hours.

There are no shortcuts.

I left our meeting challenged by the lifestyle of my colleagues.  How much would my skills as a writer and a musician improve—exponentially—if I worked 90-100 hours each week (including my 40 hour job)?

How much indeed?

Time to get at it.

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Lighten Up!

The best advice I ever received came from an eighty-four year old spitfire named Helen Easterly.  We worked together in the summer of 1987 in northern Ontario near Hudson Bay.  We happened to be part of a team of missionaries bringing the Gospel to a remote region amongst the Cree people.

Grandma Easterly—as she became known to me after she “adopted” me—had terminal cancer at the time.  Yet, she had more energy than gals sixty years her junior as she worked amongst the Cree children.  She had lived an adventurous life ministering all over the world with lots of remarkable ministries.  She was vibrant, humorous and kinetic as she stared death in the face.

Some months later, I was about to get married.  Grandma Easterly sent Kath and I a very nice card with this advice:

“Don’t take yourselves too seriously.  Learn to laugh at yourselves.”

I’ve many besetting sins.  One of them is I tend to be way too serious.  (Kath doesn’t have this problem.) Those who know me well are no doubt chuckling, Wow Christian, you’re just now figuring that out?

Easy now.  Some of us are slow.

And thick.

So I thought I’d pass on a few tips to help my friends who trip over the same banana peel:

• Listen to jazz.  Really.  Leonard Bernstein once said, “Jazz is real play.”  When I listen to jazz, I chill out. Always. Music affects the mood more than you can imagine.
• Realize that you alone can’t fix the world.  You’re one in about seven billion inhabitants on this planet.  Do what you can where you can and then let it be.  If everybody just did a little in their own orbits, things would be a lot better in the world.
• Exercise.  Free and legal high.  Endorphins.  You will feel better.  Trust me on this.
• Watch films with Robin Williams in it.  For tougher cases, break out the Three Stooges.
• Read Dilbert.  Just do it.
• Smile.  It’s proven that deliberately smiling makes you feel better, not just those who look at your mug.

Now lighten up!

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Perspective and Its Healing Properties

“Life is difficult.”

Really?

Thus begins M. Scott Peck’s excellent book, The Road Less Traveled.  Peck then makes the strong point that a good deal of our unhappiness is rooted in an unrealistic expectation—namely, that life should be Heaven on Earth.  Utopia.  Grey Havens.  Shangri-la.  We tend to expect life to be problem-free and then are upended when life poses challenges.  Lots of them.

A wrong perspective about life in a fallen world is a setup for disillusionment and unhappiness.  Unrealistically, we expect life to be trouble-free.  But it need not be that way.

One of the things I love about flying is sitting 30,000 feet above the ground, looking out the window and realizing just how small we all are and how big the world is.  It puts things in perspective.  In the valley you don’t see the lay of the land the way you do from the mountain top.

I’m learning that a proper perspective about anything has a healing quality about it.  As a Christian, I believe we live in a world that was marred when man first chose to disobey his Creator.  A fallen world.  God essentially told Adam that, as a result of his disobedience, “life is going to be difficult from now on.”  You can read about that in Genesis 3.  But even in the difficulty, God promised meaning and His presence.

Perspective: Working in a sometimes tedious job may try your patience and sanity, but not having a job is far worse.  Just ask the millions of Americans out of work.

Perspective: Winter snow and cold may be inconvenient here in northern New York, but it does help insulate the ground and homes as well as replenish the water table.  That’s more important than you know.  Just ask people in states and countries ravaged by drought.

Perspective: Teenage drama may drive you at times to distraction but you at least have teenagers to drive you there.  Just ask the parents of an 18-year-old princess who died in a tragic car accident just miles from here a few months ago.  Her family and friends—my two daughters among them—grieve a beautiful, promising life cut short almost before it began.

In a few weeks, I will again get that sense of perspective as I will be on a plane headed west to see my youngest daughter.  I look forward to seeing once again how small we are.  It has a way of putting to bed things that won’t matter four months–or four years–from now.

The next time you’re tempted to despair and frustration, remember that life is difficult.  But it’s these difficulties that teach us to solve problems and have something really valuable to give to a world in pain.

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The Heart Of The Sourdough

Like most fellow bloggers in the blogosphere, I like to monitor the traffic.  The longer I write, the more people stop by to read.  Oddly enough, I consistently get lots of hits from people who like poetry about the Yukon.

I’ve enjoyed the poetry of Robert Service ever since the late Jim Elliot, missionary and martyr to Equador’s Auca Indians, first introduced me to it in the late 1980′s via his biography, Shadow Of The Almighty: The Life And Testament Of Jim Elliot. Service’s poetry, like Jim Elliot himself, is rugged and adventurous, revealing the wildness and magnitude of God.

Anyway, here’s another Robert Service opus.  Enjoy!

______________________________

There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon,

There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon,

And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down at the clarion call of June.

There where the livid tundras keep their tryst with the tranquil snows;

There where the silences are spawned, and the light of hell-fire flows

Into the bowl of the midnight sky, violet, amber and rose.

There where the rapids churn and roar, and the ice-floes bellowing run;

Where the tortured, twisted rivers of blood rush to the setting sun –

I’ve packed my kit and I’m going, boys, ere another day is done.

* * * * *

I knew it would call, or soon or late, as it calls the whirring wings;

It’s the olden lure, it’s the golden lure, it’s the lure of the timeless things,

And to-night, oh, God of the trails untrod, how it whines in my heart-strings!

I’m sick to death of your well-groomed gods, your make believe and your show;

I long for a whiff of bacon and beans, a snug shakedown in the snow;

A trail to break, and a life at stake, and another bout with the foe.

With the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life, the Wild that would crush and rend,

I have clinched and closed with the naked North, I have learned to defy and defend;

Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out — yet the Wild must win in the end.

I have flouted the Wild. I have followed its lure, fearless, familiar, alone;

By all that the battle means and makes I claim that land for mine own;

Yet the Wild must win, and a day will come when I shall be overthrown.

Then when as wolf-dogs fight we’ve fought, the lean wolf-land and I;

Fought and bled till the snows are red under the reeling sky;

Even as lean wolf-dog goes down will I go down and die.

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Created To A Defined Purpose

John Henry Newman's desk

“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work.
 I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place,
while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.
Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.” (John Henry Cardinal Newman)

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Good To Be Home

It was thirty years ago that I was first introduced to the album shown above.  I was finishing high school and a relatively new born-again believer in Jesus Christ.  Being a musician and lover of music, one of my passions became collecting what was known at the time as “Jesus Music.”  I bought this album without hearing any samples (this during the Jurassic era where the World Wide Web was still a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye).  What a find!

Good To Be Home by Paul Clark & Friends is one of the finest examples of what can happen when friends—some already well-known—get together to produce something larger than themselves.  Paul and his buddies were established already in the Jesus Music scene.  Paul was a known solo artist as was guitar phenom, Phil Keaggy.  Joining them were two members of the group Love Song, Jay Truax on bass and John Mehler on the drums.  Filling out the lineup was Bill Speer on piano.

The album has a bit of everything on it.  Straightforward rock on “Holding On To You” and “Which One Are You?”—a retelling of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  Country rock and folk inform some of the other tunes like the title track and “For My Children.”  The song “Unveiling” is prophecy in music about the coming of the Day of the Lord with a remarkable guitar solo at the end by Phil Keaggy.  There is also the jazzy “Under His Grace.”  The final cut is the crown jewel of the album, “Abide,” long a favorite of Paul Clark fans.  It is a ballad based on John 15:1-5 with beautifully overdubbed guitars and harmonies.  Click on the video below for a sample from the album.

The strength of Paul’s writing has always been its solid biblical base.  He credits outstanding Bible teacher, the late Derek Prince in the liner notes of his album, Hand To The Plow for his teaching and influence. This is some of the finest music that emerged from the Jesus Movement of the 1970’s.

Do yourself a favor and buy it!

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Numbering Our Days

“Our days are numbered. One of the primary goals in our lives should be to prepare for our last day. The legacy we leave is not just in our possessions, but in the quality of our lives. What preparations should we be making now? The greatest waste in all of our earth, which cannot be recycled or reclaimed, is our waste of the time that God has given us each day.” (Billy Graham)

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” –Psalm 90:12

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A Superior Experience

Some time ago, I read something from renowned editer and author Sol Stein in his excellent book, Stein On Writing.  He wrote that the correct intention for a writer was “to provide the reader with an experience that is superior to the experiences the reader encounters in everyday life.”  I was really struck by that because, like many others who write and enjoy it, I do so “because I have something to say” or “need to get something off my chest” or “have a passion for this or that.”  Stein’s point is that the focus of our writing is to enhance and ennoble the life of the reader.  It’s not about me.

I began extrapolating this important reality.  What one does in writing one can do in daily life.  As a disciple of Jesus, I value Him, my relationship with Him and the experience of His presence.  When He is near me (especially in that exciting, “palpable” sense) nothing else can compare.

So I had to ask myself, “How do people experience my presence in their lives?”  Being honest I’d have to admit that at times my involvements in the lives of the people I live and work with have energized them.  And at other times, candidly, I’ve drained them.  Usually the drain part comes when it’s all about me.  And the energizing quality comes when I forget me and seek to “provide [insert name] with an experience that is superior to the experience he or she encounters in everyday life.”

Be honest.  How do people experience you?

The world has spent the past few months reflecting upon the life of the late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers.  When Steve passed away, I happened to be reading Leander Kahney’s excellent book Inside Steve’s Brain.  The one thing that emerged very quickly from my reading was that the experience of the user was one of the absolute core values of Steve Jobs and Apple.  Still is.  Millions of dollars and countless thousands of work hours were and are spent to provide Apple customers with a superior experience in their interaction with modern technology.  Jobs examined every aspect of the experience of an Apple customer and, with his outstanding team, honed it endlessly to ensure that the complex was simplified and that the experience of the buyer—even down to the opening and assembly of a new computer—was superior to anything else out there.  Jobs’ solution to the problem of pirating of music (through illegal downloading) was to provide such a superior experience for one visiting the iTunes Store, that one would be willing to pay for the tunes and files they wanted, rather than pirate them.  A superior experience as a curative for a moral and economic problem.  Brilliant.

Challenge for the day: Ask yourself how people experience your presence in daily life.  Be honest and willing to make adjustments, shifts in thinking, learn new stuff, whatever.  You may be surprised how people jump out of the woodwork when they see how their lives are enhanced just by being with you—a superior experience.

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