For the week of November 22, 2025 / 2 Kislev 5786

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Toledot
Torah: Bereshit/Genesis 25:19-28:9
Haftarah: 1 Samuel 20:18-42
Originally posted the week of November 22, 2014 / 29 Heshvan 5775 (updated)

And Isaac prayed to the LORD for his wife, because she was barren. And the LORD granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived. (Bereshit/Genesis 25:21)

Have you ever heard anyone say, “Prayer doesn’t change things; prayer changes you”? It sounds so wise and spiritual to shift people’s attention from a supposed utilitarian approach to prayer to an inner, personalized one. But is it true? Ask Isaac. Abraham’s son’s wife, Rebekah, was having trouble getting pregnant. So he prayed. I imagine it could have been Isaac who changed if the problem was him, not his wife. But regardless, they had an issue; Isaac asked God for help, and God granted his request. Not only did she get pregnant, but they had twins!

I don’t claim to understand prayer or how it works. But as far as the Bible is concerned, prayer indeed changes things. It doesn’t take expert analytical skills to determine this. A person or people find themselves in undesirable circumstances; God is petitioned for help; at times, he responds as requested. Problem solved. Prayer changes things.

I know it’s not the prayer itself that affects change. It’s God. Prayer is not a mechanism; it’s communication, communication with God, the Master of the Universe, who, out of love for his human creatures, makes himself available to us and actually responds to our requests. While it’s God who does the changing, his actions on our behalf in these cases are a result of our communicating with him.

I can’t say for sure, but I think pithy statements, such as “prayer doesn’t change things; prayer changes you,” exposes an ingrained cynicism. This obviously is not something that someone says who has experienced regular answers to prayer. It can only come from those who haven’t. While they don’t seem to be able to deny prayer as a legitimate, biblically based activity, their disappointment twists God’s revealed truth into a spirituality of their own making.

There may be other factors undermining their ability to take the Scriptures at face value. Philosophically, it is difficult to understand how God’s actions toward humans could be dependent on our requests. Doesn’t God do what God does regardless? So why pray? As I already mentioned, I don’t understand how prayer works; I just know it does as modeled by Isaac and others in the Bible. And by the way, how could prayer change us if it doesn’t change things, unless the change is only to do with the exercise of praying and nothing to do with God at all. If praying is not communicating with God, I don’t know what it is, but it’s certainly not prayer.

I do concede, however, that this statement is half true: prayer indeed changes us (again, it’s not the prayer doing the changing; it’s God). It’s essential, however, to understand how that works. This much I think I know: prayer as communication with God is similar to a child’s communication with a parent. When a child expresses a need, they invite interaction. A good, wise, and loving parent doesn’t respond with “Yeah, yeah, whatever you like,” or “Don’t bother me!” but instead engages the child by clarifying the request and granting it, but only if it is in the best interest of the child. This interactive process, initiated by the child but directed by the parent, should lead to some level of learning and growth for the child. It is in this sense that we could say that the child’s request changes him or her, but only in the sense that the parent influences that change.

But what kind of parent would be so focused on the maturity of their child that they would only use their requests as occasions for a lesson of some sort and never actually give them what they ask for? Yeshua the Messiah refers to the general generosity of parents when he says, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11). This doesn’t mean God automatically grants every request just because we ask. He is an all-loving, all-wise Father, who also knows when to say, “No.” But we won’t get an answer at all if we don’t ask.

Want to see some things change and be changed in the process? Pray.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version

For the week of November 15, 2025 / 25 Heshvan 5786

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Hayyei Sarah
Torah: Bereshit/Genesis 23:1 – 25:18
Haftarah: 1 Melachim/1 Kings 1:1-31
Originally posted the week of November 23, 2019 / 25 Heshvan 5780

Then Abraham bowed down before the people of the land. And he said to Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, “But if you will, hear me: I give the price of the field. Accept it from me, that I may bury my dead there.” (Bereshit/Genesis 23:12-13)

This week’s parsha (Torah reading portion) provides a look-see into the trading customs of ancient Canaan, many hundreds of years before Joshua and the people of Israel acquired it. Sarah, Abraham’s wife, had died and needed a burial place. We can assume that others among Abraham’s entourage had passed away beforehand, but it is only now that we read of a need to purchase property for this purpose. It could be that public burial grounds were appropriate for Abraham’s servants, but not for his own family. The cave of Machpelah was suitable for more than just Sarah. Abraham himself, plus Isaac and his wife Rebecca, as well as Jacob and his wife Leah, were eventually buried there.

When Abraham inquired after this piece of property, its owner offered the cave as a burial place at no charge. Yet Abraham insisted upon paying for not only the cave but the field it was part of. Clearly, Abraham had the foresight to secure a family burial place that could still be used after Sarah’s death. But there may have been something else going on. Abraham’s need to bury his wife set up a situation whereby his family would have a claim, albeit small, upon the land. God had promised Canaan to his descendants, but as of yet, Abraham had not acquired any portion whatsoever. Sarah’s death provided such an opportunity.

This wise move on Abraham’s part forever established his and his family’s presence in what would become a most contentious region of the world. Perhaps all he wanted was a family burial plot. Regardless, his thinking beyond the immediate need he faced for his wife resulted in a legal foundation to retain the Promised Land through innumerable challenges in the subsequent centuries.

People of faith may tend to downplay human strategy in the fulfillment of God’s purposes. We might assume that the more detached we are from practicalities and human effort, the better. Indeed, God has accomplished amazing things through extraordinary happenings. Yet, the extraordinary often works in concert with the ordinary. The person of faith understands that reliance upon God, his guidance and power, is essential to a legitimate and meaningful relationship with him. However, reliance on God doesn’t negate the need to appropriately use the vast array of tools God has given us to live effective, godly lives. One of those tools is intelligence.

Intelligence is the utilization of thought to effectively engage the world around us. It requires an awareness of one’s environment, an understanding of how life works (both in the general and the specific), and the ability to interact with others to achieve a desired result. As a tool, intelligence can be used for good or evil. For the person of faith, loyalty to God and his ways is first and foremost the platform upon which life is to be lived. But to live an effective, godly life is more than possessing moral fiber and basic spirituality; it also demands well-informed smarts.

Too often, we accept the false premise that understanding the world in which we live undermines faith. Disciplines such as science are only problematic not when they inform us too much, but when they inform us too little. True intelligence can take supposed discoveries and help us to understand how best to integrate them within the world we live. True intelligence acknowledges that we live in a complex world and requires patience and insight, as exemplified by Abraham.

We shouldn’t be afraid to think, to ponder, to plan, to strategize. God has given his human creatures the gift of intelligence as a key tool to engage the world he made. True faith is an intelligent faith; one that effectively and successfully engages life to further God’s purposes.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version

For the week of November 8, 2025 / 17 Heshvan 5786

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Vayera
Torah: Bereshit/Genesis 18:1 – 22:24
Haftarah: 2 Melachim/2 Kings 4:1-37
Originally posted the week of November 4, 2017 / 15 Heshvan 5778 (updated)

And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, “She is my sister.” And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. (Bereshit/Genesis 20:2)

I like to say, “truth is stranger than fiction,” because it’s true. It’s one of the things that evidences the reliability of the Bible. No one could—or should I say, “would”—make this stuff up. The life of Abraham is wrapped around God’s giving him a son in his and his wife Sarah’s old age. Early on, when he first journeyed to the land of Canaan, despite their infertility, he accepted God’s word to him regarding becoming a great nation one day. Eventually, he became concerned that no child was forthcoming, but at God’s reassurance, he trusted that he would indeed have a child of his own. More time went by; still no child. His wife suggested surrogate motherhood as the solution. Abraham agreed and had a son, Ishmael, via Sarah’s servant Hagar. Problem solved—or so he thought—until God appeared to him again, saying that Sarah herself would have the child of promise, Isaac. It was soon afterwards that he did something really strange: he jeopardized God’s plan.

What happened was Sarah was taken by a local king. It is clear that this happened soon after the Isaac promise, because if Sarah would have been visibly pregnant, then she wouldn’t have been taken. The king was led to believe that she was Abraham’s sister, not his wife. This was a ruse Abraham and Sarah had agreed upon as they embarked on their God-ordained journey many years before. Abraham was afraid that someone might kill him in order to steal his wife. He had figured that if she were taken, his life would most likely be spared. That he was, in fact, her half-brother made their ruse more believable, though no less deceitful.

This was the second time he had almost lost her. Soon after arriving in the Land of Canaan, they went down to Egypt to escape famine, where Pharaoh took her. Both times God intervened, and she was returned to her husband unscathed. Both times, Abraham was well-compensated, despite himself. But both times, he had risked completely undermining God’s plans and purposes for their lives. All because of fear.

That part of the story isn’t strange. Fear blinds us to the truth, resulting in destructive behavior. At least blind people know they’re blind, while fear tricks us into thinking that it functions like high-definition glasses. We think we see the world clearer than ever even though the image of life we’re engaging is completely skewed.

After all those years living as a foreigner in the Promised Land; after all those years of God’s protection and reiterations of his grand plan, by now wouldn’t Abraham, the Father of Faith, be free of such fear? Didn’t God just recently promise that Sarah would have a child? Even if he was afraid, couldn’t he muster up enough courage to avoid losing her at this most precarious time in their lives? If this were a made-up story, who would have thought up this: elderly Sarah, unusually beautiful though she was, being taken by another man just before Isaac was to be conceived. We would never imagine the hero of a story crumbling like this at this point. And yet in reality, such is the nature of fear.

What’s even stranger to me is that everything works out okay. But that’s because God’s faithfulness is perhaps the strangest thing in the entire universe! Our fears are not going to get in the way of God’s plans. And if we are part of those plans, he is going to work out our lives accordingly. That doesn’t mean that misjudgment rooted in fear is acceptable; or that serious consequences may not result. So much trouble is avoided by trusting in God, the fruit of which is right living. But at the same time, God is patient with us—and faithful. While he wants us always to trust him and not fear, it’s not as if our fears cause him to abandon us.

I wish the reality of true faith chased away every fear. I wish I was never intimidated by life’s challenges. Sometimes I find myself freaked out on the roller coaster of life, forgetting that it’s not my grasp of the cart that keeps me from being flung out. God firmly holds his children through everything, committed to never leaving us or forsaking us. We have every reason not to fear, but we do anyway. We shouldn’t; but we do. God can handle it. And maybe the more we realize that, the less we will fear.

Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version