Weekly Bracha five-oh

Sounds a little more action-y than Weekly Bracha 50.

This past week in the Messianic blogosphere and related news items:

• Mitzvot: Beautiful vs Functional – Excellent post by Dr. Schiffman. Starting out with the question, “Why was the Ark covered in pure gold?”, he answers by relating it to his experience as a father, finishing with a nugget of wisdom on the commandments gleaned from his years of following the Lord.

  I see people drive new cars, have beautiful homes, expensive electronic equipment, but have the cheapest junk when it comes to doing mitzvot. It tells me this is something they don’t place much value upon. It makes me wonder what its worth to them.

• Adopted Heirs – Gentiles as part of the commonwealth of Israel and fellow heirs together with Israel, not in place of Israel. James talks on Ephesians 3, gentiles, noachides, Galatians, Romans, and Messiah’s transformation of gentiles -- phew!
• Pesach – Adjusting Our Vision – Passover as a way of internalizing, personalizing the Exodus from Egypt.

  When we have learned to meditate on the story, place ourselves in the middle of it, experience the events for ourselves, and walk away changed just as the original participants were changed… then we have begun to enter into the story ourselves, and we have taken the step of integrating the events into our lives. This sort of meditation is necessary if one truly wants to appreciate what happened to the fathers. More importantly, it is absolutely mandatory if one expects to allow Scripture to change our hearts, minds, and characters.

• Do We Talk Too Much About Torah and Commandments? Don’t we have better things to do than talk about the Torah all the time? Heck no! Gene says. And for that matter, so does the Word.
• New Text of Ben Sira Found Among Cairo Geniza Fragments – An interesting archaeological find, discovery of Hebrew fragments of Ben Sira (“Ecclesiasticus”):

  The significance of Hebrew Ben Sira texts such as this is that we had not seen their Hebrew version for nearly a thousand years prior to their discovery in the late 19th and early 20th century. Finding these Hebrew manuscripts has been a remarkable watershed in the significance of Hebrew in Jewish religious texts. It was proof (once again) of a Hebrew original behind a beloved sacred text.

• Bilateral Ecclesiology: Infrequently Answered Questions – Gene Shlomovich issues a post explaining his positive take on Bilateral Ecclesiology.
• Israel Police Arrest 3 Suspects in Murder of Kristine Luken – A few weeks ago, an Israeli Messianic and a Christian woman were attacked and stabbed in a forest just outside Jerusalem. Now, Israeli police have arrested several Palestinian men in connection with the attack.

Enjoy the bracha, fine blog readers.