How many times have we done something and wished we had another chance to try it again? Or if presented with the same set of facts or opportunity, we wish we would have made a different decision, or taken a different path than the one we first chose?

Looking back at my decades of living I’m grateful for the life I have. Yet sometimes I wonder what it would have looked like if at the various junctures, the choices, great and small, each of which impacts the future, I had made different decisions of which way to go, how to respond. Undoubtedly there would have been small consequences, but also, large, even having had different children if I had chosen a different spouse.

Clearly I don’t want a do-over, a second chance with that decision, for my children and grandchildren are the lights of my life! The hard consequences learned from that first marriage, however, also led me years later to choose Sid, my amazingly easy going and loving husband. The result is to be blessed at this time in my life to have a partner who not only supports me in my choices for a wildly full life, but who also shares my love for Yeshua as its center. We can both support each other living lives dedicated to His service, passionately committed to sharing the truth that He is our promised Messiah.

As I awoke this morning at my brother’s house awaiting the extended family gathering for the holidays I noticed the single white electric candle in the window near the foot of the bed, the newly fallen snow visible in the distance. I was reminded of Rabbi Nathan’s poignant and powerful sermon last Shabbat (check Ruach Israel’s YouTube channel if you missed it or want to hear it again). As Rabbi Nathan discussed his feelings about these December holidays, I pondered my embrace as well of the tension we as Messianic Jews can experience as we celebrate nontraditionally the birth of a Jewish Messiah alongside traditional Christmas observances.

I’m grateful for Yeshua’s birth and actually fascinated at the opportunities HaShem has given us to wrestle with this reality. I’m grateful as a Jewish person to understand better Yeshua’s Presence on earth, then in the flesh and now through the Holy Spirit, differently than I did in my first fifty years. I’m grateful for the awareness that we are all sinful but have been given a choice for redemption through Yeshua. I’m grateful for the powerful impact we feel as the remembrance of His birth and the inextinguishable light of God’s Presence come together for celebration this December.

We don’t choose sin, but it’s part of life. We are given countless choices of how to live our lives. Even with those chances to get it right, we sin again, in big ways and little ways, for that’s just being human. Over time with that as a reality we hopefully learn from our mistakes, grow in our emotional maturity, and most impactfully grow in our understanding of God’s model of how to love sacrificially. As that knowledge grows, we are transformed, little by little, getting stronger in our ability to withstand hardship and loss, strengthened in our faith as we learn our efforts are important but God’s got our backs. He’ll never let us go.

The Bible is a memoir of mankind’s life of sin and redemption. Time and again, we blow it, we suffer the consequences, we try again sometimes making the same mistakes, are given more changes for a do-over, and our Abba keeps providing chances for redemption. That model of thousands of years of do-overs, of sin and redemption, seems to be the pattern, societally and personally for each person too. When we weren’t getting it from the mountain top, we were even given the ability to have God here on earth through Yeshua to make the message even more clear. Although we’re still messing it up as killing in His Name keeps happening, nevertheless, billions have been and continue to be transformed through Yeshua’s Presence in their hearts.

Our sins of rejection of God in our lives, whether intended or unintendedly the result of our actions or inactions, whether societally or personally, are countless. Yet our Father never leaves us. He is always giving us opportunities for a do-over. Yeshua is with us, waiting for us, helping us do it right, teaching us through the Sermon on the Mount and through His Life as the model. He guides our hearts daily if we listen to His promptings.

I see that one tiny candle as I write this Shabbat encouragement, that one small light that ignited my mind to feel Him so powerfully with me at this moment. Tonight as our family gathers to celebrate the birth of our Messiah coincident with the lighting of the first candle of Chanukah, with so many close and extended family members, I wonder if the synchronicity of the timing of Christmas and Chanukah this year is yet another powerful reminder intended during these days to encourage us to see the bigger picture.

These are the days of our coming together, Jew and Christian alike, to bring the light of Yeshua to the world, a directive given to us throughout the ages starting with that little divine baby’s birth, that tiny single light. A tiny baby transformed the world as He grew to enable us to know Him as our Messiah. The single candle we light tonight will be part of the menorah’s brilliance by Chanukah’s end as the “shamash” (Hebrew for “servant” or “helper” as Yeshua so modeled) candle lights each night’s candle. Every night the candle dies, as we sin, yet the light comes back again, night after night, as we are redeemed through Him.

We are as those tiny menorah candle lights, the single light in the window, and the powerful glow of the fully lit menorah if we choose to accept His light in our lives. We can feel His power in the quiet of the single white light against the snow or on fire for Him in the fullness of the eight flames of the ultimate fully lit menorah. The window lights may go out if unplugged, the menorah candles melt away. It’s up to us to not need a do-over in our faith in Him and in our acts of love for Him and for this world.

Shabbat shalom.

Diane