On Shavuot, God’s purpose was to give His people the Ten Commandments, ten things that form the basis of all His Torah, interpretable into the entire life of righteousness before God.

God calls by name and appoints each one He chooses for His purpose. Nowhere in the Bible do we find anyone deciding for himself or herself what to be, in the service of God’s Kingdom.

“The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me.”

Torah – the teaching of God brought to us in the first five books of our Bible – is foundational to all else in the Bible and in our life of faith.

To simply read the first chapter of our Torah portion this week is enough to humble us, just as it is intended to do.

If it were not for the Fall and the banishing of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, there would have been no need for a way back to God. But there is such a need.

God must be known in the entire earth by His character of holiness and glory, through the witness of His people, considered as such and approached as such. It is our responsibility that this is so.

Pesach is a time of experience with our living God. With the wonderful ordained feast of Pesach in mind we must establish a balance of looking back, living in the present and anticipating the future.

Mankind may fail, but God’s purposes prevail. His Heavenly fire and zeal has not dimmed.

Our portion this week is the beginning of God’s making a way for mankind to be redeemed from the Fall at Eden.