From the Editor Sep/Oct 2020
At sundown September 18, our Jewish friends will celebrate Rosh Hashanah. This first of the High Holy Days initiates a new year on the Jewish calendar, along with 10 days of repentance that culminate with Yom Kippur. During this time, God is said to open the books of life and death and inscribe people in one or the other by the end of Yom Kippur.
According to Jewish tradition, people are to repent, pray, and give charity now to prompt the Lord for a positive outcome. But what about the rest of the year?
God wants us to love Him with all our heart, soul, and might (Dt. 6:5) every day—not merely on Christmas and Easter, for example. The first of the Ten Commandments declares, “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Ex. 20:3). He always should come first in our lives.
In the late 1800s, seven British men known as the Cambridge Seven set a high bar for placing God first. Born into wealthy, aristocratic families that could have guaranteed them lives of luxury, they chose instead to enlist with Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission.
One was poet Charles Thomas Studd (1860–1931), best known as C. T. Studd. Studd later left China to minister in Africa and India. According to 5minutesinchurchhistory.com,
The Studds had manor homes as well as a London house in the exclusive Hyde Park Gardens neighborhood. There were eleven children in the Studd family, and three of the brothers excelled at cricket. C. T. was the best of the three. After Eaton [sic], C. T. Studd went to Cambridge, and he played for England’s national team. But he heard the gospel and was converted. His father had been converted by hearing Dwight L. Moody preach at a crusade in London, and a few years later C. T. Studd was converted. He wanted to give his life to foreign missions, and so he went with his Cambridge colleagues to China.
Studd later wrote a poem that appears to sum up the book of Ecclesiastes, the subject of this issue of Israel My Glory. The poem’s most famous lines are these: “Only one life, ‘twill soon be past, / Only what’s done for Christ will last.”
Ecclesiastes’ author, King Solomon, learned the most important lesson of his life when he was old and couldn’t go back in time to rectify his mistakes. Our prayer is that these articles will encourage all of us not to waste the days God has given us and to live each one for Him.
Waiting for His Appearing,
Lorna Simcox
Editor-in-Chief
