Why Two Christians Light the Menorah
This year Christmas and the first day of Hanukkah fell on the same day. This has only happened 4 times in the last 100 years 1910, 1921, 1959, and 2005. This opened my heart up to a more in depth study this Christmas morning. Jesus celebrated the Feast of Dedication /Hanukkah in John 10. In light of this being the celebration to remember when they overcame persecution some 200 years earlier, Jesus/Yeshua’s words hit me a little differently this morning. He was in the temple courts teaching and they sternly asked him. “Tell us plainly if you are the Messiah” They had expected a strong military leader who would free them from Rome. The Tanakh/Old Testament prophet Isaiah records:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9
Thinking about Yeshua’s birth in that tiny manger in the little town of Bethlehem, the words Isaiah prophesied about the coming Messiah, and his words about our ways not being God’s ways came together for me like never before. It was not what they were expecting, He was not who they expected! It wasn’t the way they expected him. But God’s ways are not our ways. AMEN! The words from the prophet about a coming messiah in Isaiah 53 would be hard for anyone to believe described a Messiah at all, and yet he was!!
“He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely, he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:2-6
That night, as we lit the Menorah, we celebrated the baby who became our Savior the savoir of the world!! Our miracle of light!! We remembered those who were not at home to celebrate this Hanukkah, those in the dark tunnels of Gaza, and prayed for another miracle because OUR GOD is bigger than the division in this world and WE WILL OVERCOME!
Brief explanation of Hanukkah:
During the Jewish Holiday season of Hanukkah, the Menorah symbolizes the presence and promises of God. It is lit for the eight nights of Hanukkah to memorialize the miracle that took place during a dark time of persecution. After three and a half years of fighting, the Maccabees defeated the enemy and regained control of the temple. But, by then it had been desecrated, and they found only one flask of pure kosher oil. This would last for only one night. They lit the Menorah in faith anyways. Miraculously the Menorah burned for eight days, enough time to purify more oil so the Menorah could stay lit. Christians celebrate Yeshua as the light of the world. That first Christmas gave us the greatest gift ever given in the history of mankind. Perfectly wrapped and lying in the humble manger.