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The Hidden Season – Healing and Growth in the Summer Season
A reflection inviting readers to notice something that has always been there: God not only appoints feast days, He also sanctifies the long, quiet seasons in between. Between the celebration of Shavuot and the sounding of the shofar at the Fall Feasts stretches a long, often-overlooked season in Israel’s calendar. There are no great pilgrim festivals during these summer months. No gathering of the nation in Jerusalem. No dramatic moments like the Exodus remembered at Passover or the giving of the Torah celebrated at Shavuot. Instead, there is qayits—summer. The Hebrew word qayits (קַיִץ) means more than simply a warm season. It also speaks of summer fruit,…
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The Jehovah Names of God
For years I have been familiar with this list of “Names of God”, which I first discovered in a Kay Arthur Bible study: Now that I am researching so much of the Hebrew roots of my Christian beliefs, I have found that the above graphic is the list of direct names of the Lord found in scripture…but you might come across additional “Jehovah” names that are inferred from the verse(s) they are found in. Here is a more extended list that Pastor Mike Stone of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Blackshear, Georgia posted these on his blog (which is no longer active) and I thought it would be good to reproduce them…
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Covenant Oath: The God Who Promises
Ancient Covenants – Step 6 In Exodus 23:20–32, we hear the voice of the covenant-making God—not asking first for what His people will do, but declaring what He Himself will faithfully do. Covenant is not built upon human strength alone. It is established through divine promise. God speaks as the One who binds Himself in relationship— the One who swears, who remembers, who remains faithful across generations. In the ancient world, covenant oaths named the terms of shared life. They clarified responsibilities. They established protection. They defined belonging. And here, God speaks His oath. Not as distant authority, but as faithful partner. The Promises of the Covenant-Keeping God God promises…
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A Weary World Rejoices – ~ 8 Ways to Lean Into Joy This Christmas
A reflection inspired by “O Holy Night” “A weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.” Few lines capture the ache of the human soul—and its hope—quite like these. When Placide Cappeau penned the poem Minuit, Chrétiens in 1847 (later known to us as O Holy Night), he was not merely writing a Christmas lyric. He was echoing a cry that has risen from the earth for millennia: How long, O Lord? Cappeau, a French poet asked to write a Christmas poem for a church organ dedication, turned to the Gospel of Luke as his source. Luke’s account does not sanitize the night of…
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From Hidden Light to Resurrection Glory: The Fire That Heals the World
The mystics teach that the light we kindle during the eight nights of Hanukkah does not begin in the days of the Maccabees. It reaches back to the dawn of creation itself. Before sun or stars were set in the heavens, God spoke light into the darkness—and that light carried more than illumination. It carried life. It bore the breath of God, the Ruach Elohim, hovering over the chaos, ordering what was broken, calling forth what was good. Yet Scripture and tradition alike suggest that this first light was too radiant for a fractured world to hold. It was hidden—or ganuz—reserved for a future time when creation would be…
