One Tree

By Sue Keranen

Years ago the Lord began to enlighten me regarding His chosen people, the Jews. It started in a very strange way. 

I was eating dinner at a restaurant with my husband when my eyes were drawn towards a man seated at a table across from us. The man looked to be in his mid-fifties and stood out from the other people around us because of his bushy grey beard. I felt compelled to watch this man and I did not know why. While I am looking, or rather, trying not to stare at him, I began to hear in my head, like a song, the words, “I’m looking for you.” Within seconds I sense that this man is Jewish and this song that I keep hearing in my head is coming from the Lord. The song played over and over again in my head, so much so that I began to feel as though the Lord wanted me to go up to this stranger and tell him what I was hearing. I restrained myself out of fear of embarrassment. To say that this was a strange experience would be an understatement. 

I did not understand why the Lord was speaking to me in this way. I only knew that I was drawn towards this man by the Lord and that the Lord was looking for him. Thus began my God given curiosity regarding the Lord’s Jewish people. 

The little bit I knew about Jews consisted of a Rabbi who visited our Church once a year for a celebration called the Feast of Tabernacles and two movies that I loved; The Diary of Anne Frank and Schindler’s List. I began researching on the Internet and learned that there are Jews who believe in Jesus called Messianic Jews. I bought some books and tried to learn about their celebrations and calendar. I was amazed to discover that in many ways our Christian ways are not God’s Biblical ways. 

Though I was researching, I had a hard time understanding much of what I was reading. I prayed that the Lord would send a Messianic Jew into my life that could teach me hands on.

Months went by but I did not meet anyone Jewish. I started to wonder if maybe my spiritual experience with the man in the Restaurant was just a figment of my tired imagination. I stopped researching and decided it was time to get back to work on that dusty novel that was going to make me famous one day. With that in mind I joined a weekly writers group to help me stay on task. 

The group I joined was small and did not prove to be very stimulating. With the exception of one older woman who wrote Science Fiction, most weeks turned out to be a gathering of social exchanges. I’m not a Science Fiction fan but I really liked this woman’s writing. Before long we began to form a writers bond and decided to meet for lunch to critique each other’s work. I was awestruck when she told me that she was raised a devout Jew. She shared many things with me that day about her past. She had serious polio in her childhood and still walked with a limp. She was supposed to have died and genuinely believed that God had miraculously healed her. She lost a child in early adulthood and began to lose her will to live. Her family desperately tried reaching out to her but nothing helped until her brother gave her a book. The book was called “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” A book about the life of Jesus. She told me that she knew her brother had given her this book in ignorance because he, as well as the rest of her family, are devout Jews. She went on to say that after she read the book she knew that she had to make a decision; either Jesus was the greatest liar there ever lived, or He was truly whom He said He was, the Son of God. She knew in her heart that He truly is, the Messiah, the Son of God, and she asked Jesus into her heart. My friend is and has been for quite some time, a Messianic Jew. 

It has been over six years since the Lord answered my prayer. My friend and I have learned much from each other since that time, the most important being, Unity. There are no divisions between us in Christ Jesus. It is sad to say, but among Christians and Messianic Jews, my friend and I are the exception, not the norm. Presently, Messianic Jews are religiously outcaste by their Jewish families and peers. Regarding their relationship with other Christians, they are oftentimes either misunderstood, or worse, ignored out of ignorance. 

Things are beginning to change as we draw closer and closer to the day of the Lord. Some Christian churches are becoming more integrated with Messianic Communities, but I wonder, do they understand that we are all the Lord’s Messianic community? Do they see that this is not a movement apart from us but rather a part of us? 

The Messianic movement is the Lord’s fulfillment of His prophecy in Romans 9:24, “For if you (Gentiles/Christians) were cut out of what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches (Jews) be grafted back into their own olive tree!

There is soon coming a time when Christians and Messianic Jews will be grafted into one tree, being Jesus. Let us never forget that they were and remain the Lord’s chosen. They were called the Messianic Community long before we were ever called Christians. They know and live His culture. They know and live His laws and calendar. We are His because of them. We are one in the Lord Jesus. 

Can I get a witness?

Sue can be reached at onlyoneabba@msn.com