This is a guest blog by Helen Mitchell, a Christian who lives in Israel, published here with her permission. For Helen’s own site, visit Higher Than Me – What It Means To Be Strong
“For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”
1 Corinthians 15:52
I don’t believe it’s any coincidence that Iran decided to launch 181 ballistic missiles into Israel the day before the Feast of Trumpets, or Jewish New Year.
The Feast of Trumpets is all about waking up from slumber. Jewish tradition says that this was the day when God finished creating the world. Although the Bible doesn’t make a direct link between the Feast of Trumpets and creation, the Hebrew month of Tishrei – where this feast falls – was generally seen as the beginning of the agricultural year in Ancient Israel. After the long, hot Middle Eastern summer, this was the month when the first rains began to fall.
To this day, the Feast of Trumpets, or Rosh Hashanah as it is known in Hebrew, is seen as a highly significant holiday in Israel and the Jewish Diaspora. Jewish New Year is not a day of frivolity and parties like New Year’s Eve in the Western calendar. It is a holy day where the sound of the trumpet or the shofar (ram’s horn) ushers in ten days of soul searching and repentance in preparation for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
Just as the first rains of the year wake the ground from slumber and prepare it for the planting of new seed, the sound of the shofar wakes the Jewish people from spiritual sleep and ushers in ten days of tilling the soil of their hearts to get ready for God’s mighty work of atonement.
I have lived in Israel now for more than 15 years as a non-Jew grafted into the Jewish nation. During these years, my feelings towards my adopted homeland have shifted at different times between love, despair, exasperation and pride.
But on Tuesday night I experienced a new feeling towards Israel. I felt in a real and tangible way the grace and mercy of God over this land. It suddenly became real for me, after all these years, that I am living in the middle of the world’s greatest love story, dating back thousands of years, between the God of all creation and His chosen people.
If I’m honest, I’ve often struggled with the idea of God having a special relationship with the nation of Israel. Sometimes it has felt unfair, even racist. I find it particularly hard when God’s name gets tangled up with an ugly sort of religious nationalism – when hardline religious groups believe they have the right to behave unjustly towards non-Jewish inhabitants of the land. I also struggle when I hear Christians in other countries idolising Israel and the Jewish people as though they are without sin.
Colin and I spent the first ten years of our lives in Israel living in an Arab village. Our beautiful adopted children are both Jewish and Arab by descent. We have experienced God’s compassion for the Arab people and other non-Jewish groups in the land. We know on the deepest, most intuitive level that God’s purposes for Israel must also bring blessing and prosperity to non-Jewish people living in the land.
Now, maybe for the first time ever, I am beginning to understand things that never really made sense to me before.
This past year has brought Israel to the lowest point in her history as a modern nation. Long before the events of 7th October, the land was torn apart by political and religious division. Then 7th October happened – a monumental intelligence failure leading to the darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. Since then, Israel has been defending itself against drones and rockets on multiple fronts while being cast as an international pariah and vilified by the world media.
Israel today is a country in deep grief and trauma.
But yet, out of these ashes, something new is beginning to be born. It’s hard to put it into words. It is like an embryo that is not yet fully formed. It is a sound barely louder than a whisper. But if you put your ear to the ground and listen hard enough, you will hear that there is the faint cry of collective faith rising up.
And God, in His mercy, is responding to this cry.
Tuesday night was a miracle of biblical proportions. Yes, Israel used advanced military technology to intercept those rockets, but the fact that 181 ballistic missiles resulted in not one single death within Israel (sadly, one man living in the Palestinian Territories was hit by shrapnel and died) took more than just military might.
I can’t explain it in any other way than the God of Israel listening to the cries of His people as they sheltered in their homes and called out to Him in whatever way they knew how.
These last few days, I have been reading testimonies of October 7th survivors. The thing that strikes me most about these stories is the faith. These people – both Jews and non-Jews, both secular and religious – found themselves face to face with wicked and murderous terrorists, and they responded with prayer.
I read one story of a young man who had grown up as an ultra-orthodox Jew but had become disillusioned with religion. On 7th October, he was at the Nova music festival with a group of friends. While running away from Hamas terrorists, he found himself hiding behind an abandoned tank with a group of other festival-goers.
As terrorists closed in on them, a car exploded nearby and several people in the group were wounded by shrapnel. Everyone was shouting, screaming and panicking. This young man, who had long since abandoned his faith, shouted into the chaos, “Quiet! Everyone! Quiet! Some of us are wounded, and some of us are fighting. Everyone else – pray!” He describes how the little group of people – religious and secular Jews, as well as two Bedouin Arabs – quietly began saying the “Shema” (“Hear O Israel”) and reciting the Psalms.
This young man survived the 7th October massacres, but many of his friends did not.
(Source: The Miracle of the Jar of Vaseline: Daniel and Neriya Sharabi’s Story in “One Day in October” by Yair Agmon and Oriya Mevorach, 2024).
God’s purposes for Israel are not like unfair privileges bestowed upon sheltered and spoilt children while the rest of the world is left to starve. The Jewish people are not finely dressed princes and princesses feeding off the fat of their father’s estate.
God chose Israel to be a servant nation. He has called her to lay herself down to bring peace, hope and restoration to the rest of world.
The world media has twisted the narrative of this war to make it seem like Israel is the aggressor and the orchestrator of injustice. Certainly, Israel has made mistakes. There have been occasions where she has fallen short of the high moral standards that she seeks to achieve. But we mustn’t forget that, right now, Israel is standing on the front line against an axis of terror fuelled by a murderous and hateful ideology that poses a threat to the entire world.
Israeli soldiers and civilians are shedding their own blood to free the world from terrorists who care only about inflicting death and destruction.
Don’t be deceived. This isn’t a matter of Jews versus Arabs, or Israel versus Gaza or Lebanon. We have Arab friends living in the Palestinian Territories who we are exchanging messages with and praying as the missiles explode. We have dear Arab brothers and sisters in our own congregation who we are standing together with, shoulder to shoulder. We know of Christians in Lebanon who are crying out to be free of the bondage of Hezbollah. We are aware of secret believers in Iran who are drawing strength right now from the God of Israel.
This is not a war being fought along racial or national lines. I believe with all my heart that Israel – for all her sins and flaws – is fulfilling her call right now to be a servant nation. I believe that she is being used as a tool in the hand of the living God to bring freedom to the world and a revelation of God’s glory.
On Tuesday night, as God delivered Israel from 181 ballistic missiles, I don’t believe that I was the only one in the land who heard a sound over and above the blaring of sirens and the interceptions of rockets in the night sky. I don’t believe that I was the only one in Israel that night who heard the sound of a trumpet.
As we enter into the Days of Awe leading up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, I believe that a trumpet is sounding all across the land of Israel. I believe that God is calling His people to awake from their slumber. I believe that the Father is calling His firstborn back into His arms, and that He will show them that He has already made atonement for their sin.
Notes From The Winepress 