Writing out my Torah

De 17:18 - "When he has come to occupy the throne of his kingdom, he is to write a copy of this Torah for himself in a scroll, from the one the cohanim and L'vi'im use.

This commandment is written to the Children of Israel, for the future, for when Adonai knows they will want a king.

But, as all things, this scripture is to mean something to us too. The message behind it is that the King, if he's to be a good king, will have to know the Torah, and so the action - the discipline - of writing out the Torah will help it be infused into his heart and mind and actions.

So, because I've been struggling recently, I want to re-focus myself on Adonai, and the only way to do that is to be present with HIM more than I have been. We're taught to read our Bibles daily, but how many of us actually do that? I don't, I wish I did. BUT, Yesterday I told my boys, that we're each going to write out our own copy of the Torah. Trent is writing his in Hebrew, I'm writing mine in English. I've written 27 verses, nearly 4 hand written pages. Myles and Rourke are on verse 15.

It takes a strong hand to write out all these words. Writing it out will help the boys with spelling, grammar, and Knowing Adonai. It will help them with reading too. It will help them with all of life's academic lessons. It will be a blessing.

Here's something I saw today.
1:16
God made the two great lights - the larger light to rule the day and the smaller light to rule the night - and the stars
1:17
God put them in the dome of the sky to give light to the earth,
1:18
to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good

When else have we seen the thought dividing darkness from the light?
2Sa 22:29 - "For you, ADONAI, are my lamp; ADONAI lights up my darkness.
Job 18:18 - He will be pushed from light into darkness and driven out of the world.
Ps 18:28 - "For you, ADONAI, light my lamp; ADONAI, my God, lights up my darkness.
Isa 9:2 - The people living in darkness have seen a great light; upon those living in the land that lies in the shadow of death, light has dawned.
Lu 11:35 - So take care that the light in you is not darkness!
Joh 8:12 - Yeshua spoke to them again: "I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light which gives life."

The light is synonymous with righteousness or the gospel/salvation. Darkness is synonymous with evil or the state of being lost.

So, as my hand is writing "and the stars, God put them in the dome of the sky to give light to the earth" my mind went to a book i read recently called Adam and his Kin. A scenario in the book is that the gospel story is told throughthe images in the stars. Now, when i was doing my writing, our conversation about oral tradition was already in play. The scripture doesn't come right out and say that the gospel story..the story of creation, of the serpant and the seed in battle...is in the stars, but oral tradition and non-canonical books are what led the author to include this element in the story.

So here I am writing out thise verse, and what i saw was exactly this message, that when Eloheim created the world, that he put the stars in the heavens to give light - righteousness - the gospel - to the earth. There is a verse that says that even the rocks will cry out and the trees proclaim that Yeshua is Lord. Well I never really understood that verse because I've never seen a rock cry or a tree proclaim... UNTIL .. until Rabbi Ralph Messer did a teaching on the Olive Branch from Romans 11 and the root and the stalk and the wild branch and the cultivated branch.... and how if the wild branch doesn't take, the whole tree dies.. I mean, this isn't just the story of a tree, this is the story of the Bride of Christ! That Tree is proclaiming that Yeshua is Lord just in the way the tree grows - or dies!

So, Those stars.. you know how the pagan world always imitates God's ways. The pagan world has astrology.. and that's something we Christians have always been warned against dabbling in. Astronomy is a cool science, but not one I'm particularly interested in, especially with the recent talk about "life on Mars" etc. But, If you can tell the story of the Gospel through the stars, well that's something I'd like to learn one day. What an evangelical tool!

So, anyone else feel called to write out their own copy of the Torah?