Spring Cleaning

There are only 11 more days until Passover. I can't believe it. As I look at my kitchen and see all the items I will have to throw out, well it's just crazy. I don't know how my cabinets get so stuffed and full. There is no way my family will be able to eat all this stuff before Passover begins. Food bank, here we come! As I am planning my attack on clearing out my cabinets and making room for more appropriate things for Passover, like Matzah and Matzah meal. I am wondering...did the whole concept of Spring Cleaning come from this Festival? It is Jewish tradition to go through the entire house and clean out the leaven from the home.

"Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses;..." Exodus 12:15

Every inch of the house is scrubbed and cleaned so that not one crumb of bread or leavened item is left behind. (That is something that I will pretend to attempt with two small children, ages 3 and 2, underfoot.) The concept of cleaning out the leaven is an awesome one. In scripture, leaven is often referred to as sin.

"Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." 1 Corinthians 5:6-8

So during Passover, you are to remove the leaven from your home, or take the sin out of your life. You are reminding yourselves of the Perfect Passover Lamb, Yeshua, who died for our sins and made us clean. This year, it occurs to me that this Spring Cleaning should also be a time to make pledges. I pledge to no longer to hoard these baked goods and stock them up in my cabinets like there's no tomorrow and replace them with food that are good for my body. And I also pledge to go through my spiritual cabinet in my soul, remove the sin, and replace it with more love, patience, kindness, generosity, forgiveness, and gratefulness. And since I have made an effort to replace the bad, sinful, leavened things, with the good, healthy, unleavened things, maybe my Spring Cleaning won't be as difficult next year!

Breath of Life

Let me begin this first blog with a little background. I am owner of the on-line store MessianicJudaica.com. I have been a practicing Messianic Jewish Believer for 15 years. And yet, I am constantly learning more and more and growing in my faith. Praise the L-rd! This post is focused on the Breath of Life. A friend of mine stated during a prayer, "thank you for giving us bodies that move." Wow. As I pondered that thought, I marveled at the fact that not only can I move my body, but that when I wake up in the morning, I am breathing! Yes, the L-rd has seen fit to give me another day. I can get up, hug my children and my husband. I am able to speak and think. I am so blessed! I know this may seem a trivial thing to acknowledge, but really, I think it is very important to remember these basic and fundamental gifts the L-rd has provided to all of us. In the world we live in with a slowing, if not failing economy, with all the rise in crime, and the decline in family values, the spread of pagan rituals, the persecution of believers and missionaries, and so many other things I have yet to mention, we are still blessed. Because the L-rd chose to breathe into our bodies the day we were born. "Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." - Genesis 2:7 This means that whether you are a christian or messianic believer, agnostic, athiest, Jew or Gentile, you were given the breath of life by G-d. So remember, this the next time you wake up and find yourself still breathing. Praise the L-rd! Count your blessings and thank Him! Because a thankful heart is a happy one.