Music, Madness & the Aleph/Tav.

Yep, it's a bit like that...

We have regrouped~ sort of.  Cait is locked into rehearsals & performances start again this weekend with the Fete de la Musique.  We have done this several times & if the weather is nice it is always a lovely day as the venues are any available public place.  Bad weather & it is just horrible, as you can imagine.

However this year I do not just have to worry about the girl & her music.  I have a church that needs nominal attention.  Actually, it needs a bit more than that but I am blessed in that study is never onerous for me & so I rarely stress over preaching or teaching duties.   I always seem to find some time to get that together though my house may go to wrack and ruin around me.

At present Tuesday is our big church day because Tuesday I had nothing else already scheduled in.  We begin with our prayer group at 7.30 AM!  These nippy winter mornings that can feel like a real penance but I have the heater on early, as soon as Ryan gets up & as he is on a 5.30 am boat the chill is pretty much dissipated by the time everyone starts arriving.  These can be quite intense sessions but very effective.

By 10 people are arriving for bible study.  Any study on the island has small numbers so the fact we get as many as we do is pretty amazing.  We are studying Perry Stone's The Code of the Holy Spirit.  Given that the Holy Spirit is the most misunderstood person of the trinity it seemed like that is where the Lord wanted us to start because it is the Spirit who enpowers the Christian's life. I like Stone because he begins at the beginning, in the O.T, them moves logically forward into the N.T.  You can trace his arguments for yourself & he always gives a Hebraic understanding, which adds so much depth.  He is also very gentle as he progresses into those areas that Christians do not always agree on...& I was looking for that.  We can't compromise but there are ways & ways to speak the truth & some are decidedly better than others!

I was a little dubious about leading a study.  Not that I'm flakey but I invariably land in some unusual places & not everyone can cope with that.  This week, as we are looking at foundational truths, I introduced the Aleph/Tav.

What?

This is the opening sentence of Genesis 1 in Hebrew.  Hebrew reads from right to left.  As you can count there are 7 *words*.

Bang in the middle is this:

It's not a word.  It's not even translatable.  Scholars have argued about what it is doing there for absolute forever. ☺

In English you don't even get to realise that it has been left out because no~one knows what to make of it.  But if you are a Christian studying Hebrew this blazes like a beacon, one of the most exciting *finds* in the bible.In Revelation 1:8 Jesus says: I am the alpha & the omega, the beginning & the end...only he didn't!  Bear with me. ☺  Jesus spoke Aramaic so what he actually said was, I am the Aleph & the Tav. 

So what?  A matter of translation.  Well, Hebrew is a pictograph language & so each letter actually carries a meaning.  When you start breaking it down this is what you get: The pictograph for Aleph is an ox head.  This is the same pictograph we find in the first name for God in Genesis 1: Elohim, which consists of Aleph [strong one] & lamed [leader/shepherd], with a plural ending; Tav is 2 crossed sticks, meaning a mark or a covenant. Put together the whole of the gospel rests on these 2 letters!  He is the covenant contract signed by El, who who will die on 2 crossed sticks.  And just to highlight that the scriptures are indeed inspired by the Holy Spirit I directed everyone's attention to the cross.  Above the cross Pilate insists a sign be placed over Jesus head, a very public statement that enraged the Jews ~ most particularly because in Aramaic it read: Yeshua Hanatzari Vemeleh Hayudahim & if you take the first letter you get YHVH ~ or the name of God.  The Jews were quite smart enough to have worked that out & they objected.  Strangely Pilate gets stubborn & refuses to change it.

Yes, I like mystery novels too!