Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem

HALLELUJAH!

  For The LORD,
 Our God, The Almighty Reigns!
 The Kingdoms of The Earth Are Become
 The Kingdom of Our God,
 And Of His Messiah!
 And he Shall reign Forever and Ever.
 King of Kings,
 and Lord of Lords.

 
Let all that has been Concealed
Be Revealed.

Father, We Pray For The Peace Of Jerusalem,
According To Your Will and Promise.
We Pray That You Will Forgive The Sins
of Our Own Nation,
and Lead us all to Godly Repentance.
Create in Us Clean Hearts, Oh LORD,
and Renew a Right Spirit Within Us.

This we Pray Together,
As We Await Your Messiah,
Blessed Be He,
To Set Up His Kingdom,
And Make All Things Right.

God Bless America.

ML/LTOS

Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem

Exodus 17

The Amalekites Defeated

8 The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. 9 Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.”

10 So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. 11 As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. 12 When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. 13 So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.

14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven.”

15 Moses built an altar and called it The Lord is my Banner. 16 He said, “Because hands were lifted up against[c] the throne of the Lord,[d] the Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation.”

Footnotes

a b Exodus 17:16 Or to
c Exodus 17:16 The meaning of the Hebrew for this clause is uncertain.

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One of the Rock Songs that should be in any beginner's guitar repertoire is Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends". Most people think it is about 9/11/01, as it came out during that era and is a song of sadness and longing. However, it is actually about the death of the songwriter's father, who had died in September. It had a really nice guitar solo that was an integral part of the song.

My own Dad passed away 11 years ago today. You can bet that, whenever I taught the song, I would think of my own Dad. And, since a lot of my boy students were at the age where their voices were breaking, I ended up doing the singing as they negotiated the complex fingering of the riff. Often, my voice would break too.

My favorite picture of Dad is of him sitting on his front porch under a fluttering American Flag. The flag was one I bought for him in Hawaii, at Pearl Harbor. It had been flown from the mast of the USS Arizona Memorial. Dad was a Navy Veteran of WW2 and Korea, so that Flag was very special to him. (He enlisted right after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and "finished High School" somewhere in the South Pacific). He flew that Flag until it was in tatters, and then we respectfully folded it up, retired it, and put it in a display case with its Certificate of Authenticity. It is hanging on my wall as I type this.

The Stars and Stripes meant so much to my Dad's Generation. That was the Flag that was raised on Iwo Jima, immortalized by photographer Joe Rosenthal. Seeing the Flag up on the hill is credited with giving the Morale Boost that the Marines needed to win that horrendous Battle.

A similar image by photographer Thomas Franklin showed Firefighters raising the Flag at Ground Zero on 9/11/01. At the time, it was recognized as a huge Morale Boost for the Emergency Personnel who had lost so many of their own, and for the People of the United States.

In Today's reading, we see the first real resistance that the Israelites encounter in their journey to the Promised Land. Moses is up on a hill, watching the Battle, accompanied by Aaron and Hur. Whenever Moses lifts his staff and holds it high, the Battle goes to the Israelites. When it drops, they start losing. Moses is an old man by now, and is getting tired.

But, like the Marines at Iwo Jima, and the FDNY Firefighters at Ground Zero, Moses has men on either side of him helping him raise the staff and keep it high up for all to see.

It is from this Bible Story that we receive another one of God's Many Names. This one is YHVH Nissi, "God My Banner".

It is not the staff that gives the miracle, but the God whom it serves. Just as we don't "worship" the Stars and Stripes, but honor the Nation, the Constitution, and the People who gave their lives so we can be free, so too we honor the God Who gives us the "morale boost" that we need to stand firm when the going gets rough. He is Our Banner waving high on that hill, or in the midst of the ruins. He is Our Victory over evil. He is Our Inspirtion.

Come and Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem, For Our FRiends in Need, For Persecuted Believers, and For Our Beloved Nation.

"He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification." (Romans 4:25)

God Bless America.

Blessings To All Who Visit This Garden of Prayer.

Hallelujah and Amen

ML/LTOS