Today is Rosh Hashana and the next nine days following are referred to as the “Days of Awe” in Jewish culture.
The ten days starting with Rosh Hashanah and ending with Yom Kippur are commonly known as the Days of Awe (Yamim Noraim) or the Days of Repentance. This is a time for serious introspection, a time to consider the sins of the previous year and repent before Yom Kippur. More here on Jew FAQ
So rarely do we look inward and reflecting upon what the Lord has done in our lives. The next 10 days are a time for reflection and introspection before the Jewish New Year. It’s never a bad thing to pause and reflect in our busy lives. So often time passes and we just keep on going. Let these next 10 days be ones of prayer, remembrance, introspection and repentance.
To hear more about it The Days of Awe from a Jewish perspective, listen to this podcast (the first 10 - 15 min are the most succinct and interesting;, the rest is fairly superfluous)
Tony Jones and Trucker Frank hit the road to explore the changing landscape of American Christianity. Frank talks about his life in and out of the church. Great testimony.
From the mouth of a student (who is a Christian but sick of the posers he’s around) I was talking with:
“I don’t consider myself a Christian because I’m too real.”
Powerful quote. I don’t think he really knew the gravity of what he was speaking. As Christians, I think we’ve forgotten (or hidden ourselves behind fig leaves) how to be real. We just try to fit a mold that doesn’t exist beyond the sweet preachy t shirts, bumper stickers, and CD’s found in the Family Christian Bookstores. It’s become the pursuit of ultimate fakeness. As long as we look holy, then we’re good. We’ve gained this goodness, but lost the authenticity. And without authenticity, what are we actually left with?
“the great sin of white north-american middle-class protestantism is shallow hopelessness, ‘cheap hope.’ we cannot be said to have a gospel because we refuse to know enough of the bad news to prepare our collective soul for the good. our insistence upon being and remaining positive and optomistic is what prevents us from exploring deeply the meaning of hope, biblically understood. we want to have easter sunday without good friday- or better, we desire a friday so ‘good’ that it is no longer for us a sybolic mode of identification with the suffering world.” [douglas j. hall, confessing the faith- 1998.]
I recently read a blog from Chris Summerfield about how he sees his spiritual walk less like the Matrix (one often used because of the duality of the universe - spiritual vs. physical) and more like Fight Club:
”There is no overarching vampire or matrix that we need to discover and fight, rather the evil is being perpetrated by us and the systems that we comply with. In Fight Club Tyler Durden is the Christ like figure who walks into Jacks life. Tyler forces Jack to face the current reality of his world, the injustice, the love of money, the obsession of the trivial and to liberate him, an “heir of oppression” (my term) from that.”
So it got me thinking. What movie does your spiritual walk of faith look most like?
Mine? Lord of the Rings. Often times it feels like there’s only a small fellowship that keeps the light going. We do our best beyond insurmountable odds, in the hope that our King will return.
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