May 25 – Why Israel – Brighton, CT
Bishop Bennett is a CUFI Pastor’s Trip Alumni from 2018 and his church was well prepared for the CUFI Why Israel message they received. A number of guests from outside their congregation attended, one of them leaving the event and letting me know he had been convinced he must be at the July Summit and he would be contacting his boss to get the time off. A mother and daughter who are from the Jewish community, and their father a recent friend of mine attended. I was invited to their home after the event and the mother beamed with excitement as she thanked me for the “amazing” Why Israel presentation and then went on to tell me the affect it had on their daughter. She is studying in the field of Biological Engineering and most of her class are very liberal, anti-Israel, and it has been having a painful impact on her. After the CUFI event she told her mom how empowering it was to hear a Christian remind her of who she was and how God felt about her!
Her mother told me that her daughter had many questions about the message but her primary one was, “Why? Why does he care so deeply about the Jewish people?”
I answered, “I learned a term from a Jewish friend over 15 years ago and it perfectly sums up why we love you. It is a Kiddush Hashem to do so. To love the people God calls His firstborn, and from whom the whole world has received the knowledge of the one true God, is an sanctification of the Name of God, a Kiddush Hashem as we do so.”
Her eyes filled with tears, as did mine.
I felt a part of Psalm 126 “When Adonai bought the captives back to Zion they were in a dream. And their mouths were filled with song and their tongues with shouts of joy. And then it was said by the Gentiles, ‘The Lord has done great things for you! And they remembered, ‘The Lord has done great things for us – and we are glad!