Month: April 2026

Shaking – Part 2

I love puzzles. The last one I finished was particularly challenging. The image on the box looked innocent, childish even. An unnamed sea with isles seen from above and a couple of volcanoes. Each isle is home to a group of people who live their best lives. In one isle live archeologists, on the other – space explorers, and so on. The figures are miniature, distinct from their neighbors in dress and activity.

Inside the box were two envelopes. The instructions: start with the heavier one. Leave the second one sealed until you use all the pieces in the first and get familiar with them.

Obviously I began with the frame. Very quickly I realized I have dozens of pieces with one straight edge – pieces I thought were meant for the frame – but I had no use for them. The frame was complete without them. What was I supposed to do with these ones? Where do they belong?

As I kept working, I realized they belong inside, within the frame. This puzzle is not divided only into islands, but also into four sections of different sizes, with borders made of sharp, unusual angles.

Across the waters and all the islands pop up many pink tubes, whose role in the picture was unclear at that point. They seemed sporadic and redundant.

Open the Sealed Envelope

When I opened the second envelope, it felt like another chapter of the same story. Like a seal being opened. There were more pieces inside, most of them pinkish. Strange! The puzzle I had just completed was whole. Nothing was missing.

The instructions inside the envelope were: split the original puzzle into four parts, along those sharp, unusual angles, and move each section to a new location on the table.

The Happy Isles Puzzle split to four parts

If the island’s inhabitants could feel, how would they react to the shift of tectonic plates, the earthquake I was causing by moving them around and changing the map and their entire world?

A large gap formed between the four sections. Into that space I was instructed to place the additional pieces. A massive creature, with scary face and pink arms, reaching into each of the islands and under the ocean, was revealed in the very center. It connected the various islands into one story with a broader meaning.

Just Like Us

It’s impossible to understand the full meaning of God’s full story while we focus our attention on the tiny island we live on, while trying to maintain some sanity and routine, thinking this is the whole story.

The story is so much bigger. His Kingdom consists of our congregations and organizations, but the in between is what really matters. This is what makes it a Kingdom, not just a collection of projects, ministries and isles. I am training myself to be aware of these hidden edges of “arms.” At times they seem to go nowhere, but I know they are there to connect the dots and expose the Big Story.

And for the bigger story to be revealed, foundations have to be shaken and shifted around. It’s painful, even frightening, but this is how the Kingdom breaks forth. Not in obvious ways, but through causing mountains to change their location.

“The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed,” seen with regular eyes (Luke 17:20). Our basic assumption should be – It exists, It expands, It will eventually be fully seen, but until then, it comes with shaking, and at times, even looks like it is controlled by an aweful creature with long arms.

In my opinion, this is one of the unseen aspects of this war. God is holding tectonic plates, or puzzle pieces that make up the four corners of the earth, and is shaking them to create a new space. In doing so, He reveals before our eyes His Eternal Arms, that have been working unseen but about to be fully revealed. Arms that connect distinct peoples into one complete story.

How am I Doing?

It’s tough to live in a war zone. I live in Jerusalem, and in comparison to other areas in Israel, it hasn’t been that bad here. Before the ceasefire started, we had days where we didn’t have even one siren go off. In the center of the country it was paralyzing. Up north it still is. The ceasefire is with Iran, not with Lebanon, and the missiles keep flying in that direction throughout the day and night. They can’t even breath in between, and the sirens sometimes sound only after the missile fall. So dangerous.

I have an excellent safe room downstairs. Multitudes of families in Israel don’t. So I can focus on that, on the level of national exhaustion after 2.5 years of war, but I am making myself daily see beyond, look at this region from above, as if I sit in my Father’s bossom, simply because my faith tells me the story – which I can only see some of its pieces right now, and many of them simply don’t fit in and don’t make sense – is much, much bigger.

Shaking – Part 1

Between one siren and the next, I sometimes wonder: what is happening in the heavens during this war on earth? What does God see from there, through clouds of smoke and pyrotechnics?

Tectonic Plates

The Middle East sits on 60% of the world’s oil reserves. That is one reason for some of the wars we’ve been experiencing – perhaps even part of Trump’s considerations when he entered this war.

The Syrian-African Rift Valley in full context: A Continental Overview

This region also sits on two massive tectonic plates – the Arabian and the African. Between them runs a rift that begins in Syria in the north and ends in Mozambique in the south. These plates move a few centimeters a year and collide at a rate of about 30 earthquakes per week on average. This is the region where the garden of Eden was planted, and it is also the route of the “highway” spoken of in Isaiah 19, stretching from Africa to Assyria, with Israel at its center.

Shaking out Wickedness and Evil

The names by which Yeshua presents Himself in His letters to the seven churches in Revelation are proven to be so steady in the midst of all the shaking around us. He is indeed the “Faithful and True Witness,” the “Lord of Hosts,” the “One who Rules the Nations with a rod of iron and shatters them like pottery,” the “God of wrath, vengeance, and judgment.”

He is also the “One who holds the Key of David” and continues to build His Kingdom (Rev. 3:7-8). One day this Kingdom will have geographical borders, when He will establish His throne on Mount Zion – right in the heart of those same tectonic plates. Zechariah describes a powerful earthquake that will take place on the Day of the Lord (14:4), when a deep valley will split the Mount of Olives in two as Yeshua’s feet stand upon it.

But until then, God is building His kingdom in hearts, joining one heart that calls on His Son’s name to another and another, bridging over cultural and ethnic differences and forming One Body. His mighty hand and outstretched arm, the same that brought the ten plagues upon Egypt and led the Hebrews out of slavery, are still at work today, exposing the wicked and shaking them.

In Job 38:13, God describes what we seem to be witnessing these days:
“He holds the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it.” It sometimes feels as though He is looking down from His dwelling place – beyond smoke and missiles, beyond oil reserves and tectonic plates – holding the map of the world as if it was a tablecloth, and shaking the wicked off it, shifting the balance of power and reshaping the entire map.

I love the final verse in Esther 8: “Many people of other nationalities became Jews because fear of the Jews had seized them.” The writer documents a mass conversion of idol worshipers to faith in the God of Israel, after the decree that King Ahasuerus sent had reached all corners of his kingdom. Idol worshipers from 127 provinces underwent a profound spiritual upheaval when they saw how the God of the Jews shook the wicked out of their midst. These are the very same regions that today are being shaken through this present war.

Why Did All Those Multitudes Convert?

Because the fear of the Jews fell upon them.

I pray that what happened then will happen again today. Not that Iranians or the residents of southern Lebanon or the Emirates would fear the Jews, but that the fear of our God will take hold of their hearts and shake them. That they will realize He is still the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel who is faithful to what He promiesed, the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron and shatters them like pottery.

Join me in prayer for the people of Israel. Our God is certainly protecting us from horrendous disasters these days, but He is also judging our nation and calling us to return to Him, to recognize the Jewishness of His Son. Pray that beyond the distress of sirens and the fear for life that accompanies them, we would lift our eyes to His mighty Hand and outstretched Arm, and return.

The plates keep moving. We, in turn, MUST recognize the bleeding Hands that hold them, and call on His name!