It's Happy UP time again!!!! - DAY 1

The Nutster is up to it again. He has named this week as an official Happy UP week. If you don't know what that is, check out his blog, Nutter's Notes.

I'm a day behind, but it is always better late than never. My Happy UP week begins today!

1. My cold is going away! Everyone around me has been getting sick lately. All my friends at work, my kids, my husband (who never gets sick) and it finally caught up to me on Friday. The good news is that I did not get it anywhere near as bad as they did. I only got a stuffy head cold, no throwing up. Today I woke up still not feeling totally myself, but definitely doing better already.

2. My kids! It is great to come home after a long day at work and have three little individuals come running up to me with hugs and kisses. (Okay, so two run up to me, the other does the 'commando' crawl) The way they act you would think my walking in that front door was the best Happy UP of their day too!

3. My friends! Lately I've been going through something (which I'll share at a later date) and through it God has blessed me in many ways. One way is to open my eyes to how many wonderful friends I have that support me and believe in me. If any of you happen to read this, I want you to know that I value your friendship and you mean the world to me.

Now that you know my Day 1 Happy UPs consider joining in and making this your Happy UP week as well. If you do, leave me a comment so I can share in your Happiness!

Current (or soon to be ) Reads

If you are interested, here are some current reads for me or in some cases books that I'm getting soon and looking forward to reading.

The Minor Protection Act
by Jodi Cowles
(Fiction)

This is a fiction book that so far is really good. In the first couple chapters the parents of a young girl who commits suicide are on a mission to stop what they consider a hate crime. They had determined from their daughter's personal journals she had been struggling with her sexuality. She had "discovered" in junior high that she was gay and in high school had become friends with a Christian boy. The boy was a friend to her and loved her, but was honest about how he felt about her lifestyle. This filled her with confusion and despair which led to her suicide. The boy was charged with a hate crime and is serving a 15 year sentence and the parents have hired a law firm to pass what has become known as the Minor Protection Act. Since they say the boy may have been a productive member of society if it had not been for his parent's 'systematic poisoning of his brain since birth' they say the parent's are ultimately responsible. Therefore, this act would allow children to be reomved from homes in which parents are "hateful, intolerant and bigoted" (too Christian).

I'm not all that far into the book yet, but so far it is very good and thought-provoking.



Restoration: Returning the Torah of God to the Disciples
by D. Thomas Lancaster
(NonFiction)

I have not yet obtained this book, but will have it come this weekend. I am really looking forward to reading it and know at least one person who has read it already and has only good things to say about it. It is basically an introduction to Torah in simple and easy to understand terms. Check out more information on this book at First Fruits of Zion - Restoration As I start to read this one, I'm sure I'll be sharing some of the information I learn.

Another book from this website that I am interested in is King of the Jews: Recurrecting the Jewish Jesus.

Made to Love You

Toby Mac has a new album coming out next month called Portable Sounds. One of the tracks on this CD has already been released and I've heard it numerous times now on different Christian radio stations. The name of the song is Made to Love and while listening to it on the way home from House Church tonight, the lyrics really hit home with me and made me start thinking.

Here is an excerpt:

Made to Love
by Toby Mac
CD: Portable Sounds

What ever happened to a passion I could live for?
What became of the flame that made me feel more?
And when did I forget…

Chours:
That I was made to love You
I was made to find You
I was made just for You
Made to adore You
I was made to love
and be loved by You
You were here before me
You were waiting on me
And You said You'd keep me
never would You leave me
I was made to love
And be loved by You

I especially like the very beginning of the chorus. It made me reflect on my relationship with God recently. Do I really live my life to show that I was made for Him, to love and adore Him?

Do I really realize how much He loves me? That He fashioned me with His own hands? That I am His Beloved? That He is faithful to me no matter how many times I've turned from Him? That He is that way because He loves me, not because of anything I've done for Him? He does not need me, but He desires a relationship with Me?

Another excerpt from the end of the song is:

I'm reachin' out,
reachin' up,
reachin' over
I feel a breeze cover me called Jehovah
And Daddy I'm on my way…

I don't think the answer to the questions I posed above is YES as often as it should be (should be 100% of the time!). Therefore, the part of the song above is my desire for my life right now. I'm reaching up to God to find that passion again. He has started to burn that passion in me again lately and I'm going to reach for it with all I've got. Do you want to join me?

Website to check out!

First I want to thank Traver for telling me about this website. I took some time tonight to check this out and believe it is a great resource.

FFOZ - First Fruits of Zion

If you are interested in finding out more about Christianity's Jewish roots, I recommend this site. Especially, the following pages:

FAQs
Vision and Mission

I have not had the chance to check out all the resources they have on this website yet, but I've look at everything regarding who they are and what their mission is. I've bookmarked this as one of my frequent visit sites.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Why the Interest in Jewish Roots?

Most of my close friends understand why I'm interested in my faith's Jewish roots, but I also have been getting my fair share of weird looks. Especially since I started carrying the Complete Jewish Bible around with me for reading material.

Jonathan on Flock's Diner has made a post today that sums up the conclusion I have come to (with God's guidance, I truely believe) and the reasoning behind it. Who Is Your Jesus? Check it out!

The bottom line is I believe in order to understand Jesus and grow closer in my relationship with Him, I need to understand who He was and how He lived.

I'm by no means ready to throw out everything I've learned regarding Jesus and the Bible throughout my life, but I am ready to challenge certain things to ensure they are a true picture of Jesus and not my culture's picture of who He was.

What's the fascination all about?

A year ago if you had asked me what a blog was, I would have been clueless. But here I am now, blogging away with tons of other blogs marked in my Favorites.

I started thinking tonight about this new fascination with blogs and what drives it. I've decided it is similar to the Reality TV fascination we have in this country right now. Now I know some of you avid bloggers may find this offensive. You would NEVER admit to a fascination with Reality TV, but I think the root interest is the same.

For us bloggers, this is a way to communicate with the rest of the world. We can voice our opinions, our thoughts or just record our day to day activities. For those who read the blogs, I think the fascination is being able to step momentarily into the world of someone else. A someone else who is a real live person, not someone in a book made up in somebody else's imagination or someone on a TV show or movie with scripted lines.

We get the chance to step into not only their lives, but their minds. We can see what they are thinking, what they are feeling. I think as human beings we have a desire to connect with others and blogging gives us a "safe" way to do so without having to risk a deeper relationship.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm just as addicted as everyone else and don't see myself stopping anytime soon. I love to write and my blog has enabled me to do so on a more regular basis. Knowing someone out there may read what I have to say and be interested motivates me more than a notebook I know only I will ever see. I pray my blog will touch someone along the way and I do not discount the relationships that can be developed via blogs, email, etc. However I just pray this does not replace real live relationships in which we interact face to face.

I do find it interesting how fast this has taken off and how many different types of blogs I can find out there in cyberspace. Just look at my favorites and you'll find a wide variety.

Anyway, I guess tonight I am just rambling on hoping someone is listening. These are my thoughts and thanks to our wonderful technology I can record them for anyone to read who is brave enough to momentarily step into my world.

Charlotte's Web

I had some free tickets for the movie theater, so I decided to spend some one on one time with my daugther and take her to the movies. We decided to go see Charlotte's Web.

I must say they did a great job on this movie. I remember reading this book when I was young and watching the cartoon version multiple times.

The story line for the movie was true to what I remember of the original AND I was impressed with how they animated the animals. In the past many movies I've seen you can tell someone has manipulated the film of the animals with a computer to make it appear they are actually doing the talking. I really did not notice that at all in this movie and was able to enjoy it without thinking "that looked weird" the whole time.

I definitely recommend this movie as something for the family to enjoy or for anyone who cherishes this story from their childhood. They also added many humorous lines that flowed well with the story.

I give it a "Go See It" rating! And my five year old daughter, seconds that.

Between Reason & Recess

McNair Wilson is a person who has inspired me. A few years back he spoke at my little church in Roseville, CA and unfortunately I was not there to hear him. However, someone who knew I was toying with the idea of starting to write again, brought me a CD from that day.



I listened to that CD a couple times and it was the "kick in the pants" I needed. I started writing again and I came alive! I've determined that I was born to write and I live to write. I later heard McNair speak at a writer's conference and after that started visiting his blog, Tea with McNair.



He has started an exercise called Between Reason & Recess which I decided to participate in. The most recent lesson had to do with finding things in your life that you do that could be passed on to someone else who is better than you at them and other ways to eliminate things from your life that can save you time and money. This freeing up of time and money is so you can redirect those resources to what you are good at. We should be spending our time and efforts on those things we love and excel at.



This lesson is Lassie Get Help!



For this lesson we were to identify items we could change. In the first column are three things I currently do (the lesson required that you NOT write these out). The second column is things I can do to save money and time in order to redirect my efforts.



Here is my lesson . . .

More Did you know?

Some more Jewish tidbits I've picked up recently. . .

1. Genesis 10:21 - Shem is the father/ancestor of all the sons of Eber ('Ever). This is why the Hebrews descendants are called Semites. Abraham (Avraham) was a descendant of the clan of Eber ('Ever).

2. Hebrew was originally written using pictograph script.

3. By the time Jesus was born the common language among the Hebrews was Aramaic, however Hebrew was used in the synagogues and during Temple worship. Jesus would have known both Aramaic and Hebrew.

4. Hebrew does not depict numbers in the way we as Westerners are used to seeing. Instead of having specific characters for numbers, Hebrew uses letters of the alphabet to express quantities. This helps to explain why you'll sometimes hear about certain words having a numerical value, (ie. the number of YHVH is 26). In addition, the Hebrew numbers have masculine and feminine genders. Therefore, the character you use to depict a certain quantity depends on whether the noun being described is masculine or feminine.

5. The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) is the core Hebrew prayer and is the central prayer of the Jewish prayerbook (Siddur). Many Jews will recite this prayer at least two times a day, in the morning and at bedtime.

There is so much more to each of these items that I can not even begin to get into tonight. Just a little bit of a teaser to get you interested in learning more!

HaShem - The Name (הַשֵּׁם‎)

הַשֵּׁם‎

My Aunt sent me information regarding the name HaShem. Outside of prayer and Torah readings, this is what most Jews use when refering to God. It literally means "The Name".

She wrote: (posted with her permission)

Just wanted to give you a bit more information on use of God’s name. I’ve never heard any Jews use the word Jehovah and the ones I know would only consider that to be a Christian term being used. That’s pretty much along the same line as the article you referred to in your blog. I wanted to give you info on something they didn’t seem to mention.

What I’m familiar with is the use of Adonai in prayer, but in casual conversation they would use “Hashem” which means “The Name”. Ha = the and Shem = name. If you do a search on HaShem I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding all kinds of references to it. It is one of the most common usages in casual conversation I’ve heard among Jews I’ve been around.


She also referenced the following:

"HaShem" - (both and neither masculine nor feminine and absolutely no plural); the word means, literally, "The Name," and it is the way that Jews refer to G-d when not in a Prayer or Torah Reading or Torah citation context. The reason is that the Torah forbids us from pronouncing the four-letter Name of HaShem in other than ritual contexts, and even then using only certain Names (other than the four-letter one, known as the Tetragrammaton) that embody characteristics, such as A-donai, E-l, E-lohim.

(Information from Judaism 101 at Orthodox Union)

* * * * * * * * * *

The link from yesterday's post regarding YHVH also included a short section about HaShem part way down the page, saying this is what most Jews use during everyday reference to God. Hebrew4Christians - YHVH

This is all very new (and interesting) to me. If you've found anything further, please let me know. I've done studies regarding the names of God before, but this was not covered during those studies.