I never expected it when I began, but in the bar/bat mitzvah lessons I’m writing for my students, I’ve been doing a character study of David and, even without hardly trying, I’ve found no less than 11 lessons when breaking down the passages that pertain to David in I and II Samuel.

Eleven lessons is much longer than I thought I’d be able to go with this, but David’s life is a much richer tapestry than most people ever hear about in their church or synagogue. Everyone remembers the tale of his battle with Golyat or his fall into sin with Bat-Sheva; but there are many more episodes out of his life, and each is rich in insight, lessons and meaning that can be applied to how we live out our lives of faith today.

It might sound a bit odd, like a random offer of foreclosure help, but I honestly think that David’s life hasn’t been studied nearly enough. Even though I extracted 11 lessons for my bar/bat mitzvah kids from the Tenakh, I skipped a lot and highlighted only the most applicable main events that would carry relevancy for the kids I teach.

Next time through, I expect I could easily double the number of lessons.

One can take matters of the spiritual world to two extremes; overspiritualizing – the habit of seeing a demon under every rock, tree and cereal commercial, and underspiritualizing – the habit of seeing the world only in the scientific, observable spectrum of reality.

There is a middle-ground, though. The prophet Elijah once, through the power of Adonai, opened the eyes of a disciple to the reality of the spiritual world, and what he say was that there is more of a struggle against the spiritual than there is against flesh and blood in much of life.

Often, a simple argument with a spouse “over nothing” can be inspired by the spirit world, looking to disrupt a marriage and lead one or both spouses into unbelief or error. It’s a way of keeping our marriages from being the powerful tools for the kingdom of heaven God had in mind when he brought couples together.

Angels and demons are not toys; they are real beings and while they are not behind everything the way some folks believe, they are behind more than most of us suspect.

Some kids turn out great. Some… well, eventually you hope they’ll catch up to their peer.

A couple weeks ago, we graduated a bar mitzvah kid who has done well; he’s a young 13, but his mind is bright and he’s been a careful study and grasped his lessons well. Yet there are others I’m far more concerned about.

A child is usually as his or her parents expect them to be. If they allow their children to drift into bad habits of prioritizing entertainment over education, rare is the child who will become a good student. If they allow their kids to do whatever their heart desires, rare is the child who will show respect for their elders and obey their authority figures.

The behavior of children reflects an aspect of a congregation to those who visit. If children are generally well-behaved, it is a blessing to the congregation. If they run wild, it creates a less favorable impression.

The trouble is that not all parents are uniform in their approach to parenting. Some are involved and caring and appropriately strict; others are self-involved and unconcerned and as stable as inflatable boats.

This is human nature, it’s true; never will there be any congregation for whom all kids and parents produce equally encouraging results with their children. But I do wish more parents would see the importance of bringing up their children well. Yes, it’s a tough job; but it’s actually part of our covenant with Adonai our God. Solid parenting ought to be taken more seriously.

It’s amazing how life ticks by.

Today, my wife and I reached 23 months of marriage and we’re now only a month away from our second wedding anniversary. We’re not getting there without trials. In fact, we’ve had more than our share, it sometimes seems.

From all the health things with mom, to other friends’ troubles, family troubles on her side of the family, our own newlywed adjustments, the loss of a friend at church to the same thing that’s taking the life of my Mom. Too many things to list, it seems at times.

We’re getting through and we’re blessed to have not only faith in common, but the same brand of faith in common. Yet even with all that, we struggle. We have disagreements, misunderstandings, disputes.

Sometimes it seems like it’s all too much.

But then, a moment passes and we find a way to the next moment and somehow we survive. Not without the help of Adonai; not without the help of friends and family. But we make it through.

It means more now, carries more history now than when we first met and started saying it; but it’s as true as ever between my wife and me: we’re blessed to have found each other.

That means more, I think, than any gift wrapped in custom boxes.

This Tuesday, my mother goes in for her treatment evaluation at Rochester Mayo. She’s been told to fast after dinner on Monday, in case they want to run the first course of radiation or chemotherapy on her at that time.

This is where it will start to get more difficult for us all, and probably more painful for Mom. It scares me. While I have faith in Yeshua, and faith in my mom’s trust in Him and her eternal destination, it is the losing of her that scares me, the pain she’ll be going through, the suffering she’ll endure.

It’s the prospect of the lack of her at the other end of a phone call, which will eventually become a reality for me, possibly before the year is out. Not being able to call home and talk to Mom is going to be the loss of a bit of my psychological security blanket.

I’m 41, an age where life insurance quotes aren’t looking so affordable even for me anymore. I’m blessed by having my Mom around this late in life, far longer than many get to enjoy. I’m a married man with a wife to lean on now. But is this still going to be painful, despite how richly Adonai has blessed me.

You bet it is. It’d be foolish and untruthful to pretend otherwise.

This is one of my mom’s favorite stories to tell about raising me, and a testimony to her faith, and haShem’s faithfullness. I hope you enjoy it.

When I was young, about three or four, I kept bugging my mom what day my birthday was. I knew it was in the fall, but at that age, not much more. And I was too young to understand “September 29.” But that didn’t stop me from asking her, almost every day, from mid-August on.

One day, she grew flustered with being asked so many times and, without thinking, she told me, “You see that big, white birch tree in the middle of our back yard? The day the leaves fall off that tree, that’s your birthday.”

I ran off, satisfied, and apparently stopped bugging her. But immediately after she said it, she began to regret her hasty words. So she prayed, “God, please help me. Don’t make my son grow up thinking his mother is a liar.”

Well, September rolled on and the temperatures began to decline, and yet not one leaf fell from that white birch, right up through September 28, even though they grew a beautiful golden yellow.

The next day, the day of my birthday, my mom took me out into the back yard. We had some patio furniture set up back there and there was a lawn chair under that tree. She sat down in it and pulled me up on her lap, prepared to tell me it was my birthday.

Before she even began to speak, the leaves began to fall. And they didn’t just fall; they rained down on us, covering us in a golden blanket of white birch leaves.

Mom told me she prayed a prayer of thanks that day, and promised never again to speak so hastily; while she appreciated the answer to prayer, she was never one to put God to a foolish test.