Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el!

Life presents us with a disturbing duality for no matter where you look, you will always find bad tailing good, ugliness stalking beauty, illness creeping up on good health, selfishness looming over selflessness, and death shadowing life.

This is not because the Creator made our planet like that - it is because it has been corrupted and there is a contest between two views of reality. The one view - which is the true view - declares that the whole universe was made by Yahweh-Elohim without any kind of corruption whatsoever - a universe without badness, ugliness, illness, selfishness or death.

The second view of reality is a kaleidoscope of different 'views', most of them contradictory, and was originated by a created being with suffient supernatural powers to delude him into believing that he could replace the Creator and manage the Cosmos himself, which he attempted to do and failed abysmally. Since that belief was founded on a lie, all attempts to 'explain' or make sense of reality flounder upon one or other false premis, all because reality is being viewed with a wrong lens.

The trouble with human beings is that we have both lenses in our system or make-up - the true one, which resides in our spirits, and the false one which so distorts everything in our fleshy nature that bears the mark of corrupted supernatural being. The first lens allows you to view everything at any time and make sense of it whereas the second one only 'makes sense' if you shut out certain truths and refuse to see the whole. Then when truth finally penetrates, the false reality comes crashing down leaving chaos behind.

Because both lenses exist in our being, we have to constantly make choices as to which one we use to view the world. Scripture makes no secret as to what we have to do to keep sane and discover our purpose for being here:

"Those who are Messiah's (Christ's) have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Ruach (Spirit), let us also walk in the Ruach (Spirit)" (Gal.5:24-25, NKJV).

"I have been crucified with Messiah (Christ); it is no longer I who live, but Messiah (Christ) lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of Elohim (God), who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Gal.2:20, NKJV).

• 1. We can complain that roses have thorns; or
• 2. We can rejoice that thorns have roses.

And what are those thick gloves? The love of Messiah! How do you get them? By surrendering self-will and yielding control of your life, along with your preferences, to Him. Only then will we have enough love in our hearts to enable us to work with them without complaining of the cuts they give us. Only then we will have the drive to hunt for buds of beauty within our own thorny cicumstances as well as theirs.

What, then, is our responsibility? To crucify the flesh. How do we do that? Renounce it when it surfaces, give it to Yah'shua (Jesus), wear the gloves of the Ruach (Spirit) and choose to see through His lens! No one is doing to let you rip their thorns off anyway, assuming that you even could, and you're certainly not going to let them rip off yours! Only Yah'shua (Jesus) has the power to disengage the flesh from our consciousness-awareness, so let Him do His job while you and I do ours.