Happy 250th Birthday America and Chag Yom Terruah Sameach! This week we celebrate the sound of the shofar, the feast of trumpets, the holy day of Rosh HaShannah, that is the head-rosh of the year! A new year, a new start, and we are so grateful for it! Our parasha takes a pause in the final book of Devarim, and goes back to Bereshit to remember the beginning as we begin our Torah cycle anew. This week we read of an encounter and a covenant that Avraham makes with Abimilech. Then, it says in 21:33-34 33Then he planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba and called there on the Name of Adonai, the Everlasting God. 34He lived as an outsider in the land of the Philistines for many days. Do you see that? Avraham dwelled as an outsider in the land G-D had given him. Why? We see the amount of compromise of Biblical values today. We see more people accepting pop-culture's worldviews over the Biblical views passed down generationally. We wonder how people can accept the unacceptable and allow the unallowable and still think that they are walking with G-D. In Genesis 26:3 we find a commandment to Yitz’chak: Live as an outsider in this land and I will be with you and bless you—for to you and to your seed I give all these lands—and I will confirm my pledge that I swore to Abraham your father. In this verse, Yitz’chak is asking G-D because there is a famine in the land, and G-D gives him instructions on how to survive it. He is told not to go to Egypt, but to live where G-D tells him to dwell. Amos 8:11 tells us about a time I believe describes the days we live in. 11“Behold, days are coming” —declares my Lord Adonai— “when I will send a famine on the land —not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Adonai. 12 So people will wander from sea to sea and roam from north to east, searching for the word of Adonai, but they will not find it. G-D's instructions to Yitz’chak provided so long ago speak directly to us today. The key to living a blessed life in the middle of the culture of sin is found in the these words: "Live as an outsider in this land." If we want G-D to be with us and to bless us, then we must live our lives as outsiders in the land. When we forget that this world is not our home; we end up making excuses for sin, so that we will fit in and be accepted in it. We listen to voices of justification providing excuses for our acceptance of sinful choices, every one of those voices is spoken from a position of one who no longer dwells as an outsider in this land. If you would like to know more about living as an outsider check out this weeks' activity. If you have ever wondered how to walk through the culture without being part of it, this activity is for you! Be sure to get your parents permission before you download and print the lesson and activities for this week. (links are below attached to the cartoons of children.).