Write them [God’s words] on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that as long as the sky remains above the earth, you and your children may flourish in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors. [Deuteronomy 11:20-21 (NLT)]
After unlocking the door, he reached up to the small metal case on the right side of the door post, touched it, and brought his fingers to his lips. My friend is Jewish and inside the box he touched was a mezuzah—a parchment (called a klaf) upon which the words of Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21 are hand-written.
Like the tefillin worn during prayers, the mezuzah serves as a reminder of God’s continual presence and the covenant He made with His people. For the Jew, it’s like God saying, “As you enter this house and as you leave it, remember me, your heritage, and all that I’ve taught you.” When touched upon entry, the mezuzah is a reminder that the home is a holy place and, when touched upon exit, it is a reminder of how one should act when out in the world. Observant Jews place a mezuzah on nearly every exterior and interior doorway (bathrooms excepted) as a constant reminder of God as they walk throughout the house. The mezuzah also tells anyone passing through the doorway that it is a Jewish household: a home that serves one God and operates by a special set of traditions, rituals, and principles.
As Christians, we don’t affix mezuzahs to our doorposts but there certainly are times I wish we had a sign by the door that said, “Jesus lives here!” It would remind all who pass through the door (including me) that ours is a home that serves Jesus and operates by His principles. While it should be obvious to anyone that Christ is our king, I wonder if it is as obvious as it should be. I’m not talking about crosses or pictures of Jesus on our walls, Bibles on the bookshelves, or Scripture verses on pillows. Is every room in our house filled with the Fruit of the Spirit? Are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control evidenced in all of our interactions? Is there mercy and forgiveness in our dealings? Is the presence of Christ sensed and is God acknowledged in all we say and do? It’s those things, not décor, that identify a home where Jesus lives.
Thinking about touching the mezuzah upon entry and exit, I wonder what it would be like if, every time we came in the doorway, we paused for a brief moment of prayer, thanking God for our safe arrival, asking Him to help us leave the worries and troubles of the day at the threshold, and praying to be filled with His wisdom, love and patience. What if, every time we left our houses, we also paused for a brief moment of prayer, asking God for safe travel and the guidance of the Holy Spirit in all we say and do?
There are hundreds of rules regarding the mezuzah: everything from what size room requires one and the height of its placement to the form of the letters in the script and the way the scroll is to be rolled. Although Jesus freed us from the Old Testament laws, the purpose of the law has not diminished—both in our houses and out, we must always remember the Lord our God and all that He has done (and continues to do) for us.
For thousands of years, during their weekday morning prayers, observant Jews have worn tefillin. Sometimes called phylacteries, they are small black leather boxes attached to leather straps. Inside the boxes are four sections of the Torah from Exodus and Deuteronomy. The verses pronounce the unity of one God in what’s called the Shema, the promise of blessings for obedience and warning of retribution for disobedience, the obligation to remember the Jews’ bondage in Egypt, and the responsibility to transmit their faith to their children. One box is strapped on the left arm so to be near the heart and the other is strapped on the forehead. The placement symbolizes that God’s word is to be impressed upon both the heart and soul.
Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water. … But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.” [John 4:10,14 (NLT)]
A young pastor friend admits to not being good at reciting Bible verses from memory. A product of the computer/Internet age, he just taps in a key word or topic and, almost instantly, the verses are right in front of him in whatever translation he wants. There’s no need to memorize verses when, with just a few keystrokes, the words appear. I may read the Bible every day and predate the age of computers but I’m no better at knowing verses by heart than he. If I remember my passwords for both computer and Internet, I can find whatever verses I need. While that works when I’m researching or writing, my desk is not where most witnessing opportunities occur. I could plead age as an excuse but I didn’t memorize Bible verses even when my brain was younger and possessed far less useless trivia than it does now. My pastor friend and I both profess to love God’s word and yet we don’t seem to love it enough to learn it by heart.
Having heard that I write Christian devotions, the man looked across the dinner table and asked, “Have you always been religious?” The unexpected question from a Jewish man I barely knew caught me off guard. While I knew he wasn’t asking for a long salvation story, I needed to answer his simple question. I faltered through a brief explanation that I couldn’t remember a time I didn’t consider myself a Christian but that my faith grew deeper as it carried me through some really rough spots in life. Having no idea where I’d go from there, I heaved a sigh of relief when the table’s conversation moved to another topic.
On the last day of 2017, the liturgist at church read Malachi 4, Revelation 22, Proverbs 31, and Psalm 150 – the last chapters of the Old and New Testaments, Proverbs and Psalms. It seemed fitting on the final day of the year to hear the final words in Scripture. It was only later that I learned there is one more psalm, but don’t look for it in your Bible. Unless you are Greek Orthodox, it probably won’t be there. Although both the traditional Hebrew and Christian Bibles have only 150 psalms, the Greek translation known as the Septuagint includes Psalm 151. We have to go back a bit in history to understand why the discrepancy.
Devotions of the Heart 