This year is one of the few years that Hanukkah and Christmas coincide. So firstly, let me wish you all a very happy Hanukkah. Hag Hanukkah Sameah! It is such an important holiday, especially these days when anti-Semitism is rising everywhere.
Natasha and I were invited to celebrate Hanukkah this week at the Great Synagogue in Sydney with the Israeli Ambassador to Australia.
There were many Christians there. Saw Dovid, our VP there as well. It was a wonderful time of sharing with the rabbis.
The Chazan, a young man with a glorious voice led us in singing well-known Jewish songs. I say ‘led’ but at times we could not follow to his heights.
The talks were good, but it made me appreciate Yeshua as the light of the world, and how sermons on being the light in this world really miss the mark without knowing Him.
Perhaps some of you are not celebrating the birth of Messiah. I know some in Messianic congregations have a problem with the day, or for some other reason. But it is not the day that we celebrate, but what we celebrate on the day.
If my wife’s birthday was in April ? on Hitler’s birthday, I would still like to celebrate it and hope no-one thought I was celebrating his birthday.
I get so excited that the Messiah has come in the flesh into this world, into history, into the creation He made. That God sent the one promised to David to sit on the throne forever. His death and resurrection are so powerful , but His incarnation and birth are also as powerful.
‘God so loved the world that He gave His son’ speaks to me of the whole deal, beginning with His incarnation.
The best part of Christmas is the hymns that are sung at that time. I wish Messianic Jews would come up with something equalling those songs about the Messiah’s birth.
In our Russian-speaking congregation we sing songs at Christmas which we love and which we sing at no other time. We could of course, but we just don’t for some reason.
May you and your families all have a very happy double holiday. Hag hag Sameach. With lots of hugs from us.
With love in Yeshua, the Light that has come into the world
from Natasha and myself, Kon Michailidis, and from Yeshua Tsidkenu