In the JOY of the Lord is your stronghold

My dear Friends

The title of this piece is taken from the book of Nehemiah, in the Old Testament, Chapter 8, verse 10. It is a fitting motto for The Little Sisters of Joy, at whose heart is Jewish-Christian reconciliation. In this passage the Torah has been reconstituted by Ezra, the scribe and Nehemiah, who began the rebuilding of the !st Temple after its destruction in 587BC and the exile of the Jewish people into Babylon. They were not to return for 400 years, and many beautiful and haunting Psalms are said to date from this timne, lamenting their exile:

'By the waters of Babylon, there we sat and wept. We were asked to sing a Song of Zion by our captors-how can we do this in an alien land?'

'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be cut off!'

Today is also the Feast of Tabernacles, commemorating the journey through the desert to the Promised Land. It is a time when the Jewish people remember they were homeless and nomadic. The same theme is picked up in the New Testament in the book of Hebrews:

'There is no abiding city in this life.'

Strangely enough I find this quite comforting. We are all on a journey to our common Promised Land, where there will be no fighting, where we will be in our right relation to each other in a world of harmony and love.In a period of great unsettlement for me personally, I am beginning, with some difficutly, to see the wisdom of this teaching about the inconstancy of our lives here on earth. To use a French phrase: 'Plus ca change, plus ca reste...the more things change, the more they they stay the same.'

JOY!
Happy Feast!
Sister Gila