What Caregivers Can Learn From Hanukkah

Nothing says Christmas like a water buffalo. For a poor family in Asia, getting a water buffalo is like getting a farm tractor to pull a plow, or getting a milk truck full of delicious milk, or getting a stand at the market to sell cheese. A water buffalo opens the door for work, food, and income. More importantly, it opens the door to talk about Jesus.

And nothing says Christmas better than that. Live on American Family Radio, this is Peter Rosenberger. This is Caregiver. This is the show for you as a family caregiver.

More than 65 million Americans right now are serving as a family caregiver. Maybe it's a child with autism. Maybe it's a family member with addiction.

Maybe it's a parent with Alzheimer's. Whatever the chronic impairment, there's always a caregiver. And we are glad that you are here. This is the show just for you. And we're glad to have you here.

I'm bringing 35 years of experience to help you stay strong and healthy as you take care of someone who is not. If you want to be a part of the program, I'm going to start off with a very simple quick song. Normally I do a song every week just to kind of drive home the point I want to talk about. And then if you know this, give us a call, but we're going to directly speak about why I'm doing this song. And then I'm going to introduce a special guest to you, and then we're going to talk about some things today. So if you want to be a part of the show, 888-589-8840. And by the way, we have a subject we're going to deal with today. But if you've got something else going on that you are just struggling with as a caregiver today, this show is for caregivers, then feel free to call. We'll swerve into that and feel free to call.

But here's, I'm going over to the caregiver keyboard here. All right, if you know that song, 888-589-8840, we're going into a very special time of year for a lot of different individuals, groups of individuals, faiths, religions, all kinds of things. And I invited my friend Eric Walker on because for two reasons. One of them is John Reilly is producing the show today, and those of you who listen regularly to this network know John Reilly. He does the Middle East Report. And so John Reilly gets to be a part of the show today.

He doesn't know that. But Eric Walker and I have been doing a program together for many years as Rabbi Eric Walker. He's a Messianic rabbi, and he is an extraordinary teacher.

And I wanted to talk about Hanukkah, and I wanted to talk about why that's important to us as believers and why it's important to us as caregivers for that matter. And I'm a big fan of, and those of you who listen to the program regularly know that I love Churchill. And Churchill once said, the further back you look, the further forward you can see.

The further back you look, the further forward you can see. And he was an intense student of history. And I think we've lost a lot of that, or a lot of people are trying to rewrite some things. And so I wanted to have Rabbi Walker on today to talk about some of these things in the context of what we do. And he is the head of Igniting a Nation.

There's a ministry that he founded, and he's an exceptional teacher. So anyway, good morning. Eric, how are you feeling this morning? I'm doing great, Peter. How are you? How is the caregiving audience this morning? Well, I think I'm doing okay. I got a little bit of a cough.

It's not COVID, it's seasonal, and I've had it for over 30 years, but everybody wants to diagnose it as COVID. It has more to do, I think, with the horses and the barns and the cats and the dogs than I think, but I'll manage to muddle through it. But I'm glad that John Riley's here. Now, John, I don't know if you can join us on the program here, but John is producing the board and he does this. And John, I did this specifically because you're running the board today, and I want you to feel free to chime in with any questions you have or comments or whatever.

But you have been faithful to do a Middle East report for some time now, and I always love them and I think they're extremely informative. But we're going to drill down on this issue with Hanukkah today with a man who really has studied this, lived it, understands it, and goes deep into Scriptures. This is important because it was important to Jesus, and if it's important to Jesus, it's important to us. So I thank you, Eric, for being here.

Just jump into this, Eric, and then we'll watch the time on the break, we'll go to it, we'll just take as long as we need to take. What is Hanukkah? Why is it important? The name itself, Hannah, we know Hannah, who was Samuel's mother, the name Hannah means dedication. So when we see it used in a name like Hanukkah, it is a feast of dedication. So there's a connection to the Hebrew meaning of the word, and the whole story behind this feast of dedication or festival of lights or Hanukkah has to do with the fact that during the intertestamental period when the Israelites, Israel was overrun by the Greco-Roman Empire, the Seleucids, that King Antiochus Epiphanes had taken over Jerusalem, was the ruling party, the ruling governor, and he squealed and kept the people suppressed, however, he did the unpardonable, and that was he sacrificed a pig on the altar of the Temple of Jerusalem, thus defiling it. And this is what many would say is the pattern of the abomination of desolation that we're looking for the Antichrist, so we have a precursor to that in this period of time, which incited the Maccabees to rise up, the word Maccabee means hammer, so Judah Maccabee was the hammer, and the revolts that took place were farmers with their plowshares that they turned into swords and they shoveled and they took on this mighty army, dating back to Alexander the Great, I mean this is a well-oiled military machine, and overtook them and recovered the temple, however, finding the temple defiled, they had to sanctify, they had to rededicate, they had to cleanse it, and so that procedure for cleansing required one that they of course washed this tainted blood from the altar, that they rededicated, and part of the furnishings that we see beginning, in the very beginning with the tabernacle is the lampstand, and the lampstand has always been the significance of God's light, what we call Ha'or, or the light, the light of God is Or Elohim, and the light of God, and we're introduced to the light in Genesis 1.14 in Yah's very first command, when he says, let there be light, and there was light, and the light he called good, so you hear in Genesis 1.4, Ba'yar Elohim et Ha'or keto, and God saw the light, that it was good, now this was before the luminaries came into existence, this was not the sun, this was not the moon, this was a very extraordinary light, and this was the light of the world, now Jesus comes along, he declares himself to be the light of the world, actually during the feast of tabernacles, the city is surrounded by the ramparts and the walls with large vessels of oil, normally there is the lampstand which is seven branches, there are two branches and then three branches coming off of that giving you seven, and that is the traditional menorah, or the traditional lampstand if you will, that we see that Aaron and his sons were charged for everlasting, with the responsibility to trim the wicks and to fill the lampstand. Well listen, hang tight for a second, we're going to go to a quick break, this is Rabbi Eric Walker, we're talking about Hanukkah, why is this important to us as Gentiles, as believers, as caregivers, and we're going to unpack that more in this next segment, this is Peter Rosenberger, this is Hope for the Caregiver, this is the show for you as a family caregiver, part of our journey in staying healthy as caregivers is understanding our spiritual heritage, understanding who we are in Christ, who we are as a people, as a people who serve the living God. Well there's a treasure at the end of this narrow road I'm traveling, and it gives me a purpose for my life.

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver, this is Peter Rosenberger, this is the program for you as a family caregiver, we're glad to have you with us, I'm talking with my longtime friend, Rabbi Eric Walker, we're talking about Hanukkah, and why this is important to us, why this is important to us as caregivers, and we're going to wrap all that together, but I wanted to give some background and I'm glad he's here with us, Rabbi Walker is head of Igniting a Nation, ignitinganation.com, if you want to see more about him and an extensive amount of teaching, and it prepares me as I dig deep into these things with him, I've gotten stronger, I've gotten understanding that sustains me as a caregiver in this, and we'll show all that a little bit later. But anyway, Eric, you were giving us a little bit of the background and history, this is all happening between the Old and New Testament, there's about a 400 year period where, you know, it seems like it was kind of quiet, but it really wasn't quiet, it was very turbulent time, and the Maccabees were involved with this, and Judah Maccabee, who was, as you said, it was the hammer, and so, anyway, go ahead and jump back in where you were. Okay, so they come in, they defeat the Greek army, and they come into the temple, they see the temple defiled, they look as the very first thing you do is you light the lampstand, this is part of the order of things in the temple, it was the order of things in the tabernacle, that this light never be extinguished, but it requires that you have purified olive oil in order to burn, and the purification process is a seven day process, it's not a one pressing, it's not like your extra virgin olive oil that you buy at the store, you can't take a match and light that, this requires many, many pressings in order to purify the oil, and they discovered that they only had enough oil to last for one night, and would not be able to complete the process of the dedication, which takes a week. God miraculously, they prepared the lampstand, God miraculously extended the one day's worth of oil for an eight day period in order to allow them to purify enough oil so they could dedicate the temple. Let me interrupt you just for a second, that same process that was done with the oil, was that the same process that, for example, when Samuel anointed David with oil, would that have been the same process for that oil as well? Absolutely.

Well, let me back up. You have an anointing oil, a precious oil, which is not for burning, but is for anointing, and it's mixed with spices, it is what the oil is used for the anointing of the right ear, the right thumb, and the right toe, that is a special oil and a special formulation, but it's olive oil, and it's got to be purified and has to be pressed. The process for that does not require that it be purified for the purpose of igniting, so we're not really given, as a matter of fact, it's somewhat of a mystery as to what that particular combination of spices were, it's not defined for us so that we can go out and replicate it today. That's one of the things we anticipate in being able to identify who the high priest is going to be at the time of the calling for the return of Messiah, that he will be anointed that way, and they will have knowledge of what that process is. So, the same olive oil being the base, the different configuration.

So there's a couple of very important lessons here. First of all, we're dealing with two different types of lampstands. The common menorah, or lampstand, is seven branches, that is what is usual and customary, and what everyone's used to seeing. For the period of Hanukkah, it is a nine-branch lampstand. What they share in common is that there is a center, one centerpiece, which is used to light the other candles or the other wicks on the lamp.

And this is where the real meaning comes in to us as believers, as caregivers, as people. And in John's opening remarks, he talks about Jesus declaring the light of the world, and this city on a hill that can't be hidden, and let your light so shine. The amazing story about light is kind of the same pattern as love. As you lit the Hanukiah, the special eight-branch during these eight days of Hanukkah, you light the center candle first, and then you use the light from that candle to ignite the light of the other candles.

That candle is called shamash, S-H-A-M-I-S-H, shamash, depending on how, that's the phonetic spelling of it. And it means servant, and it is the servant candle that shares its light with the other candles, yet loses none of its own light. So therefore, we are called to share our light, but yet it does not diminish our own light. It's one of the few things you can give out that exponentially increases, like love. If I can give love, my love does not get depleted, my love gets exponentially increased through the sharing of it. By the way, Eric, this is exactly why I wanted to delve into this, because I think sometimes we as caregivers are in a serving mode, and we become depleted on this, and we don't realize that if we are tapped into the inexhaustible love of God, we're not going to be depleted. That is going to continue on, and there's this great precept that you're referencing here that's extraordinary. And this is what I wanted to drill down on more of, because he is the light, but he's also serving. And as he's serving, and as we serve in his name, we're not depleted on this. We may feel that way sometimes, but we're not. And so thank you for bringing that into it. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, because I love listening to you teach on this.

But it's true. We all leak, and it's very important, because when we understand the fact that God saw it as so important that he assigned the maintenance of the lampstand, the oil and the wick of the lampstand, was an eternal responsibility for the descendants of Aaron, the sons of Aaron. And even today, what's really interesting in traditional Judaism is all of us have taken a candle and tried to light it, and we stand there and we kind of feel foolish because there's wax on the wick. And if we think about it, we would have taken the wax off the wick, and then the wick would have immediately flipped. However, in traditional Judaism, we actually have a prayer in the preparation of the wick, and that is for the removal of the wax from the wick prior to the placement of the candle in the lampstand.

Why that? Because unless we are prepared, we're going to have to go through the trial of having the fire, the heat hit us much longer than is necessary to melt away that outer veneer, that outer wax, to get to the wick to ignite it. So if we do the preparation work in advance, and we dedicate it to the Lord in advance, and we prepare ourselves in advance to receive that fire, that light, then we're not being depleted and we are not being burnt up. And I look at caregivers and say, well, if you haven't prepared, if you haven't taken the time to prepare yourself, to pray over yourself, to strip away anything of you which is going to keep you from receiving that light, and making that a process which is quicker, less painful, less involved, but requires a little bit of upfront preparation. Now, it would seem very legalistic, it would seem very, what would you say, religious kind of thing, but in practicality, it makes a tremendous amount of sense and has such a powerful lesson to all of us, that if we would just prepare our wicks before we allow the light, that we would receive it instantaneously, as opposed to having to wait to burn off that veneer of wax covering the wick of our life. Well, and this is something, Eric, we're going to get ready to go to break here, so I want to continue this thought, but this is something that I have taken to heart on this program, particularly with clergy and pastors preparing congregations, because this is going to happen to pretty much everyone in your congregation.

You're either going to be a caregiver or you're going to need a caregiver. And if we're not preparing our people to serve, if we're not preparing our people to minister, Jesus came to serve and he said, here's what he said, sick, naked, hungry, prison, thirsty, those five things. And he's pretty serious about it.

Go back and look at the text and see what he says. And if we're not preparing our people to serve in this manner, where those things, where our hearts are being, those things are stripped away from that selfishness, from all those things, then it does take the fire a little bit, a little hotter fire to burn that out of us. And we can avoid some of that if we're called to this. And then if you see that precept, you look through all the scripture where God is calling his people to separate themselves, to remove themselves from this stuff, to purify their hearts, to cleanse us.

The whole point of this thing with Hanukkah that Eric was talking about was the length of time they knew it was going to take to purify this temple. There's a purification process as part of the holiness. They set apart this of it so that we can then indeed serve. We are called to what is, what is the scripture we're called to be Royal of a priest, a Royal priesthood is what Jesus.

Royal priesthood. Let me give you one more picture so you can see this, is that when you light that center candle, it's in place. It now must be removed from the comfort of its place as the premier, the center candle, the servant. It must leave its place and go serve others before it returns to its own place. And in this process, it is going out of that great commission. It is going out of its place to go to and take the light to the other candles.

The other candles do not come to it. And there's a powerful fixture for all of us that we must move out of our position to serve others. Then we can return to the comfort of others. Astonishing. All right, we're going to continue more on this. One more segment here. This is Peter Rosenberger.

This is Hope for the Caregiver. We're talking with Rabbi Eric Walker of Igniting a Nation, ignitinganation.com. His ministry is appropriately named and we look forward to more teaching on this. We'll be right back. Don't go away. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver.

That is Gracie, my wife, and Russ Taft. And that's from her CD Resilient. And you can get a copy of that CD. Go out to hopeforthecaregiver.com.

You'll see a picture of the CD. I'll tell you why you're there. If you like what you hear on this program and you're finding it meaningful and it's blessing you, help us do more. And one of the ways you can help is through the—we have two programs through Standing with Hope. Standing with Hope is the presenting sponsor of all that we do at Hope for the Caregiver and everything else.

And we have two programs for the wounded and those who care for them. Gracie, many years ago, had a vision of prosthetic limb outreach where she wanted to provide quality prosthetic limbs for her fellow amputees. She lost both of her legs as a result of this car wreck she had almost 40 years ago.

We've been doing this over in the West African country of Ghana, and we treat patients not only in Ghana, actually we sponsored a patient this year in Kenya on the other side of the continent. But we have a young lady right now who we saw when she was 15 years old. She was hit by a car.

Her name is Sandra. And then she had—we were going to put a leg on her, but she had a bony protrusion coming out of her amputated limb because her growth plate was still going. And we sponsored a surgery over there.

We worked with the surgeons at the teaching hospital there in Corleyboo. And they removed that osteophyte, and we were able to then get a smooth residual limb so we could fit her prosthesis. Well, she's still growing, and she's 18 now and just turned into a beautiful young woman. But her leg needs to—she needs a new leg.

That's what happens with young people. They grow, and so they've got to go through. And Gracie will tell you that as an amputee herself that you go through a lot of legs over the course of your life because your body changes and so forth. Well, Sandra needs a new one, and we're putting one on her this week. She will have one.

She got fitted this week, and then it'll be ready by the end of next week. You can help be a part of that today. It's a great Christmas gift. If you want, just go out to standingwithhope.com and click on the Giving page. And just whatever's on your heart to do, we'll put it towards that. We'll send you a copy of Gracie's CD.

I think you'll like it. We're talking with Rabbi Eric Walker, a longtime friend of mine. And he and I did—I was a regular guest on his program for, I guess, four or five years.

And every month we would do kind of a caregiver day, and we became just fast friends on this and lifelong friends now. And it's extraordinary the depth that we can go into in our conversations. And I wanted to include you all in that because these are part of regular conversations he and I have of exploring great biblical truths so that I can be more grounded.

And when I come on the air, I don't want to be doing this in a vacuum. I have people that I seek out, and I want to understand things of Scripture. I figured the more I understand God's words, the better equipped I am to do what I do.

And not only on the air, but as a caregiver. And by hanging onto these great truths of God, it equips me to better care for Gracie and the circumstances that we are in. So I wanted to have him come on today and talk about Hanukkah, and as you're seeing now, the precepts and the principles apply to our situations. God is so textured in what his Word says, and it's important that we spend that time to explore it. And so I thank him for being here, and I want you to go out and take a look at his ministry and his teaching. He's got an extraordinary amount of resources out there for you to listen to.

Just click on it. ignitinganation.com So Eric, take us back to where we are with Hanukkah, with serving, with light, with consecration, with setting apart, with preparing ourselves to serve. All of these things are wrapped into this feast that Jesus celebrated. This was important to Jesus. He knew every bit of this that was going on when he walked on this earth. The reason he was so familiar with it was this was the second temple.

He was ministering in the very place that it had been defiled by Antiochus Epiphanes. So this is tangible, this is real, this is contemporary to his messiahship. There's two very significant, what I would consider to be God using something of the natural to reveal a supernatural truth to us, and that is this. That first of all, to every one of the caregivers out there, for everyone listening, for everyone who's ever struggled with darkness, with that sun going down feeling in your life, there's a reminder in the Hanukkah story that all the darkness in the world cannot extinguish even the light of one candle. And that the Bible tells us that Israel is the pupil of God's eye. Now in your English Bible, your Christian Bible, it says apple, but in the Hebrew it says pupil. And the reason it says pupil is because the pupil is what perceives light and receives light.

Very important. And so he talks about Israel that way. When we talk about Israel as believers, this is what we are all engrafted into, and therefore this becomes part of our spiritual DNA and our spiritual history and our spiritual heritage. So as we approach times of darkness, the message has always been to us, would you rather be a person who curses the darkness, or will you become a person who lights a candle? And you can curse all the darkness that's happening in your life, or you can simply strike a match and light a candle, and the light has overcome the darkness. And the message in the Bible has been that Jesus is that light. But because he is the servant that came to serve, not to be served, because he is that servant candle, he then ignites in us and declares us to be the light of the world when he is not with us. When I am here, I am the light of the world, but now I'm going to prepare a place for you, and you are the light of the world. And let your light so shine that man would see your good works and bring glory to your Father in heaven. In order to be a light, we cannot allow ourselves to be extinguished by our circumstances, and darkness cannot extinguish light.

Light always overcomes the darkness. I love this, and you and I have had long conversations about this and others, servant leadership and so forth, and we've gotten away from this. It's astonishing, Eric, the world is, particularly in our country right now, we're kind of wrapped up in genealogy, and everybody wants to go online to these things and do your DNA test and see where you came from and all that kind of stuff. And yet we ignore the greatest genealogy researcher, research platform, which is scripture, to see where our spiritual DNA comes from. And this is so important to us because then it equips us to better function in this world. We, as Jesus said, we are now not of this world. We're in it, but we're not of it.

And our DNA now is grafted far greater than anything that goes back a couple hundred years. And this is why I love having you on this program and hearing your insights. You and I did another program, and we did a lot of this on yours, about mourning and about grieving and understanding what that means to us from the biblical point of view. I was talking to a friend of mine, and you'll resonate with this. He was talking about when he went through his ordination process, and the board there were examining him as a pastor, and they asked, what scripture would you use when dealing with people who suffer? And it was an interesting question, and he said, well, I'll tell you the one I won't use, which is in the middle of that suffering, I'm not going to say Romans 8.28, which is all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purposes. He said, that's a powerful scripture, but there's an appropriate place to share that. And he said, I think we've misused that to people. We try to kind of button it up, and we don't respect their suffering.

And I told him, I said, well, if I'd been there, I would have used Job 2.13, where it said his friends sat there silent with him for seven days because they saw his suffering was great. And we don't respect the suffering that people have. We kind of blithely go into it and want to give out platitudes or things. And I look at my fellow caregivers and the angst that they're going through.

And I'm not going to come up there and just kind of pat them on the back and give them a scripture and say, well, go ye therefore now, and you're okay now. No, we want to mourn with those who mourn. We want to grieve with those who grieve, bear one another's burdens, and respect that trauma. And the more we delve into scripture, and as you've done this this morning, the more you see that that is the heart of Christ.

That's the whole point. And I love how you do that with the candle, you know, the servant candle. And are we modeling that? Or are we so busy trying to help everybody be happy that we're not ministering in their brokenness, out of our brokenness, through the one who was broken for us? I know we only have a couple of minutes left, but I want to make sure that we lay this foundation stone firmly in place so that your audience really understands why we need to go back to the fundamentals and the basics. And that goes going back to the dedication of the first temple. This is the feast of dedication, and it is a rededication. It's a temple that's already been dedicated.

Now it needs to be rededicated. So just because we've dedicated ourselves to the Lord does not mean we should not go through a period of inventory and cleaning up and housekeeping and decluttering and removing things that have defiled our altar and rededicate ourselves to the Lord. But this is so important for Gentiles, and they haven't been told this, is when King Solomon dedicated the first temple. Remember David wanted to build a house for the Lord? God said to him, I didn't ask you to do it.

I'm going to have your son do it. And so King Solomon did it. And in King Solomon's opening prayer and his dedication to prayer, it is the first time that there was intercession on behalf of the nations. That means when the very first temple, the place that bore God's name, that his presence entered into that temple the same way it was with us in the wilderness for 40 years, a pillar of fire by night, a pillar of fog by day, his spirit now entered the temple and did not depart until the temple was destroyed in 586.

So it was there for a very long time that it dwelled there. Hold that thought because we're up against the clock here. Hold that thought. I'm going to keep you for one more segment. I'm sorry, Eric.

I know I'm taking advantage of you, but I really don't care that much. You and I are that good of friends that you'll stay with me because this is fascinating. This is Rabbi Eric Walker talking with us about Hanukkah, why it's important in our spiritual DNA way back all the way to Genesis and how it strengthens us today as family caregivers. This is Peter Rosenberg. This is Hope for the Caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. We'll be right back.

Hey, this is Peter Rosenberg. Have you ever helped somebody walk for the first time? I've had that privilege many times through our organization, Standing with Hope, when my wife Gracie gave up both of her legs following this horrible wreck that she had as a teenager. And she tried to save them for years, and it just wouldn't work out.

And finally she relinquished them and thought, wow, this is it. I mean, I don't have any legs anymore. What can God do with that? And then she had this vision for using prosthetic limbs as a means of sharing the gospel, to put legs on her fellow amputees, and that's what we've been doing now since 2005 with Standing with Hope. We work in the West African country of Ghana, and you can be a part of that through supplies, through supporting team members, through supporting the work that we're doing over there.

You can designate a limb. There's all kinds of ways that you can be a part of giving the gift that keeps on walking at standingwithhope.com. Would you take a moment to go out to standingwithhope.com and see how you can give?

They go walking and leaping and praising God. You can be a part of that at standingwithhope.com. I'm Peter Rosenberger, and this is your caregiver minute. Physical isolation is one of the most challenging issues caregivers face, but our thoughts become isolated as well. In those lonely moments, our minds can play tricks on us and take us down dark roads. Like a pilot flying through clouds without looking at instruments, we can become quickly disoriented.

In those moments, we need external input, an emotional GPS, if you will, to help us regain our heading and proceed safely. We don't need to believe everything we think. The book of Proverbs tells us to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and to not lean on our own understanding.

You know why that's in there? Because we lean on our own understanding. Serving as a caregiver is simply too difficult to do alone. Don't lean on your own understanding. Ask for guidance and help.

Don't believe everything you think. This has been your caregiver minute with Peter Rosenberger, brought to you by Standing with Hope, a ministry for the wounded and those who care for them. There's more information at standingwithhope.com. He'll give you hope for tomorrow, joy for your sorrow, strength for everything you go through. Remember he knows, he knows the plans he has for you. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Part of being healthy is understanding who we are, who we are in Christ. Who does God say we are? And learning our spiritual DNA, our roots, our deep roots to sustain us so we have a deep anchor to hold.

You know that old hymn, my anchor holds, you know, how do we hold on to an anchor if we don't have one? And today I've brought my dear friend Rabbi Eric Walker on to talk about Hanukkah, but why is this important to us as Gentiles, as believers, as caregivers? And he is at ignitinganation.com.

Ignitinganation.com. And I want you to go out there and explore the teaching that he has. If we fill our mind with solid biblical truths, we're going to be able to withstand the things that happen to us along the way, particularly our caregiving journey. It is a crucible of very uncomfortable things. And there are many, many late night conversations we have with the ceiling fans wondering, you know, God, are you listening? God, are you there?

What does this all mean? But the further we explore into his Word, the stronger we're going to be able to navigate these things that are coming our way as caregivers and that are here today, each day that we deal with. And this is what has sustained me and I felt it would sustain you as well. So I'm sorry I had to interrupt for the break.

Take us all the way out to the end of the show, Eric. And by the way, the song I played today. This Little Light of Mine.

I'm going to go ahead and just give you that one because I wanted just to touch base on what that song meant to us as he talks about Hanukkah. This Little Light of Mine, I'm going to let it shine. But the light doesn't emanate from us. It comes from him through us. And he is the light that we cling to on this.

So go ahead. I'm sorry. And Hanukkah is the Feast of Light.

So sorry about that, Eric. It all connects because this deposit that God makes within us is a deposit of light. And that is the supernatural light that emanates from us. As King Solomon was dedicated to the First Temple and we read in 1 Kings 8, it's the first time that there's intercession made that says as for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel, but has come from a distant land because of your name. For they will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your off-striped arm when they come and pray toward this temple, then hear from heaven your dwelling place. Do whatever the foreigner asks of you so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and share you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your name. It goes on to say that my temple will be a house of prayer for all nations. That we are all Jew and Gentile alike. Believers and Messiah are grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel. And this history, this rich part of our life which ties us to the spiritual capital of the world, Jerusalem, its rich history and heritage and its biblical import, there was no New Testament at the time of Jesus. Now when you can grab a hold of that simple but mind-blowing truth and you realize that Jesus says I only say what I heard my Father say and I only do what I saw my Father do, then what he did on this earth that we are called to pattern our lives after is in the same pattern as what we've read about in the Old Testament Scriptures.

That's the foundation of understanding. Now you come to a time where there is this intertestamental period where there is a defilement. The Jewish people, until 1948, we never, never ever had rule over Israel, any part of it. The Promised Land, the battles that were fought in getting the land in the Exodus and the book of Joshua and the battles, we never had sovereignty until it was recognized by the war of 1948. So that was 4,500 years of under the rule of other kings and kingdoms and oppression, which in the life of a caregiver you're under.

Kind of, in a way, under the covering of God, with dealing with an oppressive ruler, an oppressive taskmaster, and that is this debilitating situation, whatever it is that you are having to deal with, it's taking control. And what God wants us to do is to rededicate ourselves, put things back in order, this Jenga of life that we have is making sure that the cornerstone and the capstone are in place and the pattern of building the temple, dedicating that temple to the Lord, and going to him first. He says seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and then all the rest of this will be given unto you. God established early on that his temple was going to be a sanctuary for all who call upon the name of God, and all who want to walk in his blessings and in his benefits.

And so we have that available to us. We have that in Luke 10.19 where Jesus has given us the authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and overcome all the power of the enemy. He says nothing whatsoever shall harm us.

Well that's an eternal promise because we know in the natural that there are things that do harm us. And yet we are to be encouraged that we are partnered with, we are one with Messiah, and when we have that oneness, when we receive his light, and we are then a light to another, it is something that, yes, the light does, eventually the candle burns down, but God has made a provision. And we see that provision in this Feast of Dedication for the continued refinement and purification of the oil, so that there is no limited supply to replenish what has been consumed. And so the process was that the lampstand was to never be extinguished, it was always to be burning, because the light of God can never be extinguished. If you go into a synagogue of any kind, you will find that there is a light hanging from the ceiling over the ark that holds the Word of God. And it's called nir tumid, it means eternal light. It is a representation that there is a light that can never be extinguished, that is always there. The miracle of that light, and this is what we celebrate this time of year, the great miracle happened in Israel, is the miracle of the light. It's amazing, but when I first put up the light over the ark in the synagogue that I built here in Birmingham, Alabama, on the box it said that this light is good for 2,000 hours.

About 2,000 hours isn't that long when you're doing 24 hours a day, seven days a week. However, after seven and a half years, it still had not burnt out. Seven and a half years, 24 hours a day, that is thousands upon thousands upon thousands, long past. And it's just another representation, I have never seen a light over the ark in any synagogue that has ever been burnt out. Never.

And I'll be 70 years old in four weeks. I've never seen it burnt out. That when God's light is eternal, and we recognize that it cannot be extinguished, that it can get dusty, it can get dirty, it can get out of the shadow of the muck and the mire, that does not extinguish that light. That just means we need to clean it off, replenish, refill, renew, rededicate, and that's the reason why this time of year is so important in this Feast of Dedication, is to take the time and to examine the impurities of the oil we're burning. Is it giving off a bunch of smoke and soot, and is it leaving a nasty mess that's much worse than started, or are we taking the time to purify that oil?

To refine that oil so that when we do burn it, it burns clean and gives off the brightest and the purest of light. That's the best we can do. And we can't solve the problems that we are caregivers over. We're not the Holy Spirit, we're not the Lord, we aren't the medical professionals, we're the loved one who is giving out what we can.

But if we take the time to rededicate, to refill, to replenish, and we do that on a regular basis, this is why the oil was constantly having to be refined so they had enough in the storehouse to be able to fill the lamps on a regular basis so that they would never run out and never be extinguished. Well, this is why I wanted you on today, and I appreciate you taking a little extra time. This time of year, the days are shorter, and sometimes the nights feel incredibly long, and we become weary as caregivers. This is a hard time of year for caregivers, no doubt about it, for many reasons. We've got the flu and cold season, notwithstanding all the COVID stuff, but just the normal flu and cold medical appointments getting in at the end with deductibles that are met.

You want to have some kind of procedure if you can or whatever, the stress of the holidays. There's all kinds of factors that make this a very difficult time of year. And I hope that you're encouraged today as you listen to Rabbi Walker share with these things, these biblical truths, to know that the light that is in you from Christ cannot be overcome by the darkness and the brokenness of this world. It may seem discouraging at times, and I get that.

I really do get that. But He who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it to the day of Christ Jesus. And that's something I just want you to hang on today as you go through your journey. This will be available out on our podcast, and please go see more at ignitinganation.com, Rabbi Eric Walker, and listen to some of these great teachings that will strengthen you today like they do for me.

Hope for the caregiver, hopeforthecaregiver.com. We'll see you next week. Some of you know the remarkable story of Peter's wife, Gracie. And recently, Peter talked to Gracie about all the wonderful things that have emerged from her difficult journey. Take a listen. Gracie, when you envisioned doing a prosthetic limb outreach, did you ever think that inmates would help you do that?

Not in a million years. When you go to the facility run by CoreCivic and you see the faces of these inmates that are working on prosthetic limbs that you have helped collect from all over the country, that you put out the plea for, and they're disassembling, you see all these legs, like what you have, your own prosthetic legs. And arms. When you see all this, what does that do to you? Makes me cry. Because I see the smiles on their faces, and I know, I know what it is to be locked someplace where you can't get out without somebody else allowing you to get out.

Of course, being in the hospital so much and so long. These men are so glad that they get to be doing, as one band said, something good finally with my hands. Did you know before you became an amputee that parts of prosthetic limbs could be recycled? No, I had no idea.

You know, I thought of peg leg, I thought of wooden legs, I never thought of titanium and carbon legs and flex feet and sea legs and all that. I never thought about that. As you watch these inmates participate in something like this, knowing that they're helping other people now walk, they're providing the means for these supplies to get over there, what does that do to you, just on a heart level? I wish I could explain to the world what I see in there, and I wish that I could be able to go and say, this guy right here, he needs to go to Africa with us. I never not feel that way.

Every time, you know, you always make me have to leave, I don't want to leave them. I feel like I'm at home with them, and I feel like that we have a common bond that I would have never expected that only God could put together. Now that you've had an experience with it, what do you think of the faith-based programs that CoreCivic offers? I think they're just absolutely awesome, and I think every prison out there should have faith-based programs like this because the return rate of the men that are involved in this particular faith-based program and other ones like it, but I know about this one, it's just an amazingly low rate compared to those who don't have them, and I think that that says so much. That doesn't have anything to do with me, it just has something to do with God using somebody broken to help other broken people. If people want to donate a used prosthetic limb, whether from a loved one who passed away or, you know, somebody who outgrew them, you've donated some of your own for them to do. How do they do that? Please go to StandingWithHope.com slash recycle. StandingWithHope.com slash recycle. Thanks, Gracie.