Why I Love the Jews

     At 74 years of age, it seems my childhood Memories are sharper than ever and increasingly precious. We can’t remember where we put our keys, but the fine details of those childhood years increase in value. I write songs, and I just realized how many of those songs are about my childhood, about events that though small, turned out to be the biggest turning points in my life, making me what I am today. It’s that way in the world’s history too. Events that took place hundreds or thousands of years ago shaped and continue to shape the world we live in today.

As a Christian. I believe Jesus came into this world, the world of the Jews, born in the small town of Bethlehem. “He came into his own“ the text says, that is, to his own people, the common folk of Israel, from the slums, from Nazareth, of which Nathaniel quipped “can anything good come out of Nazareth? “ Jesus was apparently not physically attractive. Isaiah 53:2 said “He had no dignity or beauty to make us take notice of him. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing that would draw us to him.”

     Who can forget the stories of Noah’s flood, Cain and Abel, or of Moses crossing the Red Sea and the fiery mountain that rumbled and quaked? Who can forget Little David versus the giant Goliath, or Elijah calling fire down from heaven, or bringing the poor widow’s son to life? Everything that makes me and the world what it is came from these stories, and from the blessed lips of those God granted to shape me. The sterile defenders of intellect may laud the superiority of logic, but we all know, like it or not, that human emotion is an indispensable part of the world we live in, and rules the day.

     The book of Ruth tells the amazing story of an Israelite woman from Bethlehem named Naomi. During a famine they move to Moab where her husband Elimelech dies and her two sons marry two Moabite girls, Orpah and Ruth. 10 years later Her two sons Mahlon and Chilion die, and she is left alone with her two daughters in law. Here’s the actual text:

     “Some time later Naomi heard that the LORD had blessed his people by giving them good crops; so she got ready to leave Moab with her daughters-in-law. They started out together to go back to Judah, but on the way she said to them, "Go back home and stay with your mothers. May the LORD be as good to you as you have been to me and to those who have died. And may the LORD make it possible for each of you to marry again and have a home." So Naomi kissed them good-bye. But they started crying and said to her, "No! We will go with you to your people." “You must go back, my daughters," Naomi answered. "Why do you want to come with me? Do you think I could have sons again for you to marry? Go back home, for I am too old to get married again. Even if I thought there was still hope, and so got married tonight and had sons,

would you wait until they had grown up? Would this keep you from marrying someone else? No, my daughters, you know that's impossible. The LORD has turned against me, and I feel very sorry for you." Again they started crying. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye and went back home, but Ruth held on to her. So Naomi said to her, "Ruth, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her god. Go back home with her." But Ruth answered, "Don't ask me to leave you! Let me go with you. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.” (Ruth 1:6-16 Good News Bible)

     The entire book is famous for this last italicized line. Ruth had fallen in love with her Jewish mother-in-law. It’s a simple as that. And that is my dilemma. I have not only fallen in love with Israel’s story and characters, but with its people, dreams and future. Like elderly Jacob’s life in Genesis 44:30 whose life was “bound up in the lad's life;” (of Benjamin, his youngest son) my life is all tangled up the old, old story of the Jews and their God. Even now I weep as I write! I want to be in their story, the greatest story ever told!

     God has been so good to me, and I don’t know why. I’ve been to Israel twice, and on my second trip I picked up a handful of rocks as I stood on the mount of olives looking at the temple mount, and brought them home. My baby sister Colleen (best girl singer ever!) was dying of brain cancer, and on one of our last visits together I handed her one of these little rocks and told her “it’s all real Neen! It’s as real as this rock! Substantial in three dimensions! Our salvation is that secure!”

     And now I cry as I remember the line “For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof.” (Psa 102:14)

     I know that today’s rabbinical Jews think at best that I am a deluded fool and at worst a deceiver. I know, too, that Jews are just as evil and corrupt us all of the rest of the human race, but I love them anyway. Why should their flaws surprise anyone? Even God called them “stiffnecked and stubborn” just like the rest of us. God chooses sinners because that's all He has to work with. The Bible story is not about good people, but about bad people whose hearts are changed by God’s goodness.

     The Jewish story is my story too! To a world crying ever louder to abandon the Jews, I cry “Never!” And to the Jews who roll their eyes and want me to go away, I cry “Don't ask me to leave you! Let me go with you. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.”

"Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!  (Numbers 23:10 KJV)

and finally, this:

"Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro? and who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; these, where had they been?"  (Isaiah 49:21 KJV)

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