Eight Crazy Nights....

As you have probably gathered, I have had a long few weeks, and blogging has not been a priority on the list of obligations that must be taken care of before I put myself to bed.

First, there was Hanukah, which as the song goes, "while you have one day of presents, we have eight crazy nights."

But let me tell you, eight days of specialness can take its toll on any good housewife. With tons of baking, cooking and a candle lighting ceremony every night, these partygoers were pooped, well atleast I was anyway. And of course, there are the Hanukah haters - those who think, especially because we are not technically Jewish, that we're not allowed to celebrate the holiday and that our celebration of Hanukah tilts the universe to the point of us all falling off the planet someday.

I'm here to set the record straight, Hanukah will not make the world blow up, and while people think it messes with all the world's Christmas celebrations, believe me, it doesn't. Hanukah has nothing to do with Christmas. Hanukah began as the rededication of the temple after a small group of Israelites rose up against Syrian oppression and took back their temple which had been defiled by the Syrians. It is also a celebration of the provision of G-d through inconceivably difficult times. Many Israelites saw their entire families and their children slaughtered because they did not renounce their belief in G-d during the years of oppresion leading up to the rededication of the temple. The reality of the world we live in now, thousands of years later, is that there may very well come a time in our lifetime when we may witness the same atrocities. It makes the celebration of Hanukah so gosh darned real and tangible.

Anyway, another aspect of Hanukah is that at its core it is the rededication of the temple. Now that Jesus has come to earth, died and ascended into heaven, those who believe in Jesus are now the individual temples of the Holy Spirit. We, our bodies, are now the temple, and therefore for Messianics the celebration of Hanukah becomes the rededication of our lives to Jesus for another coming year.

So because we kind of celebrate the coming of Jesus and his dwelling on earth during the Feast of Tabernacles in October (when Jesus was actually born), in December we celebrate the rededication of our lives to Jesus.

Here are the highlights.










(Please disregard my volleyball duds in this picture. I had just returned home from my volleyball match and we hurried to begin the Hanukah celebration.)



In this picture we are praying the Hanukah blessings. Please disregard the pink dining room that I am still working on painting over. In a couple weeks, I should have a totally new outlook on eating - namely we will not be dining in the psychotic-inducing pink room any longer. We've come into the homestretch in the last few days.


Here we are reading the story of Hanukah.


Here Kaydn Rye is giving hubby a Hanukah book of paintings he created.