Grant 00:00:00: Welcome to Torah Today Ministries. My name is Grant Luton, and joining Robin and me today are two voices that many of you are very, very familiar with. You probably hear them in the morning, and then at night you go to bed, and I am referring to our dear friends Gary and Lynne Preston from England. So welcome to this special episode of Be Our Guest.
Robin 00:00:34: Hello everybody, this is Robin. And we are here with our friends, Lynne and Gary. And what Grant’s referring to, of course, is the project that we did, I don’t know how many years ago now, Grant, what was it?
Grant 00:00:47: It’s been about three years, two or three years.
Robin 00:00:49: And we did a version of the daily prayers and—
Grant 00:00:53: Called the Siddur Project.
Robin 00:00:54: It was a very, very special thing. And if you’re not familiar, we can provide that for you.
Grant 00:01:00: And everybody’s saying, well, when are we going to hear your guests’ lovely voices if we want to hear their British accent? Gary, would you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about yourself and get going.
Gary 00:01:11: Well, hello, everybody. I’m Gary Preston, and it’s a real pleasure to be part of this opportunity to talk to you all and just to enjoy the time that we’ve had with Grant and Robin as we’ve been over here in Ohio. And we live in Ramsgate in Kent, which is right on the southeast coast. Known Grant and Robin face-to-face since 2014.
Grant 00:01:39: I was trying to figure out what year it was.
Gary 00:01:41: We were teenagers. Absolutely, and that’s actually when I think you made the suggestion that we do the recording for the Siddur, which took a little while for us to build up courage to say, yes, we would do, but we are so pleased that we did do that.
Robin 00:01:58: And so is everyone else.
Grant 00:02:00: Yes, it’s been a blessing to so many thousands of people. And by the way, as we record this, this is October, 2025, we still have a number of copies of the CDs of this Siddur project where you can hear Gary and Lynne’s lovely voices doing the morning and evening prayers. So if you send a request, go to our website, torahtodayministries.org, and just drop us an e-mail, include your address, and we can ship one out to you, provided you live in the United States.
Now, Lynne, I know you’re a shy person. You don’t like to take the limelight, but can you just say a few words of greeting to the folks?
Lynne 00:02:48: Sure, yeah, this is just so lovely to have this opportunity. It’s exciting. And really, we were so honored to be asked to do the recordings for the Siddur, that was wonderful. So yeah, it’s been a wonderful time here with you both in Ohio for these past few weeks. And yeah, delighted to have this opportunity.
Grant 00:03:10: Well, it’s kind of funny, you came over for Sukkot, which just finished yesterday. And you’ve been here for a little over two weeks. And I kept thinking, we were talking about, we have to do a Be Our Guest episode with you two. And I kept thinking, we’ve got plenty of time to do it. But you’re getting on an airplane in a few hours. It just hit me. We haven’t done it yet.
Robin 00:03:30: Better late than ever.
Gary 00:03:31: We’ve had lots of conversations, but actually, yeah, this is the first time we’ve been able to put it down in a formal manner, so to speak. So that’s really good.
Grant 00:03:41: Well, you know, it’s funny, thinking back when I first asked you if you two, with your lovely accents and your voice, you just have great voices.
Robin 00:03:53: And sensitivity to the prayers.
Grant 00:03:55: And sensitivity to the prayers, absolutely. I’d ask you if you’d think about recording them and you said, yeah, we’ll do that. And then I just kind of forgot about it. And I don’t know how many weeks went by and suddenly these files show up in my inbox and there they are, they’re done.
And so if you get the CDs, one CD has Gary and Lynne doing the morning and evening prayers for the weekday. And there’s background music composed by our dear friend, board member, Kamal Sampara, who lives up in Nova Scotia. And the second CD is just the music, Kamal’s music by itself. So one of these days, we’ll get Kamal here and record his story.
Grant 00:04:36: But I’m going to go back to you two. When we first met you back in 2014, you were fairly new to the Torah movement. I don’t like to call it a movement, Torah awakening. And Torah has been an extremely important part, the foundation of your life in some ways. How did that come about?
Gary 00:05:00: I think it would be fair to say that over time, Lynne and I have both grown up in Christian homes in one form or another. I grew up as a Catholic initially and then moved into the Baptist Church and then sort of more evangelical circles through what we call over in the UK, Christian Union. So mainly based in colleges and universities. And in fact, that’s really where I met Lynne while she was at college. So, and that’s how we got to know each other.
But what I think a lot of people find today and what we were finding was that there was a gap in understanding that we were opening the Bibles, but we were really just sort of sitting in the last quarter of the book and not really making any connection to the other three quarters that were there. And so we had both been on a search to try and discover more about the history, not so much the history, but the foundation of what we were coming from.
And I think particularly from the Catholic point of view, to open the Bible in church was so rare. You know, it sat there, but it was like a lucky talisman, rather than something that you actually referred to. And that was why I was so surprised when we came into the Baptist Church, because actually people did open the book. Right. But then there was very little connection with what was going on in the first part and sort of seeing that history.
And so Lynne and I, once we were married and spending time together, we were really just confounded, I think, and desiring to get a deeper understanding. And then we came across a chap called Chuck Missler, of course.
Robin 00:07:04: Who was a great Bible teacher because he was willing to get stuck into the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures.
Gary 00:07:06: Which provides such a context.
Robin 00:07:08: Absolutely, yes. For even our Savior.
Gary 00:07:09: Yes, well, what we call the Old Testament, that’s the Bible that Yeshua and the apostles all studied and lived by, and everything in the New Testament scriptures is founded upon the Hebrew Bible, because that is their standard and always was, still is.
Robin 00:07:27: Otherwise, didn’t you get the feeling that it contradicted itself? Like you knew bits and pieces? I did from those older books in the beginning of the book. But what I was presented with from the New Testament letters and scriptures, felt like it was a contradiction to what I had been told was true. So that caused a lot of confusion for me. I don’t know if you found that as well, but man, it really is nice to know it’s one story.
Lynne 00:07:57: Absolutely. We sort of arrived at this image that our knowledge of the word was a bit like a helium balloon floating above, but bringing in Torah and that was really grounding, and it starts to become one piece.
Grant 00:08:13: Now, was your background similar to Gary? Gary was raised Catholic with Baptist.
Lynne 00:08:18: Methodist. Methodist church, yes. Right from when we were very young, all the way through. But then for me, I really felt like I had wings and things took off when I went to college and going to the Christian society there. And suddenly there was a bigger group of people also looking to grow in this.
Robin 00:08:38: Different thoughts, different vantage points.
Lynne 00:08:41: New books.
Robin 00:08:41: Right.
Grant 00:08:42: So you both kind of discovered Chuck Missler at the same time, that you were already married and took an interest in. So pick it up from there, what happened?
Gary 00:08:52: 2005, we went across to Israel with a teacher called Yakov Prasch, who was a Jewish, he was a messianic Jew, and he was running a tour that we decided that we would go on. And in fact, as a result of that, we met some friends who we’re still in touch with, who are part of our Bible study group even today. And all of a sudden, the Bible became 3D.
Grant 00:09:19: Israel has a way of doing that, doesn’t it? That’s what happened to me.
Robin 00:09:23: 3D and full color.
Gary 00:09:25: Yes, absolutely. And now we were seeing these places and these accounts, and we were actually standing in those places. And so again it was a sort of next step along the way because we’d still been involved with evangelical churches and at that time we were involved in the sort of UK division of the Vineyard movement.
And for me that was a bit strange because my understanding from the past of what Vineyard had been was that it was quite Bible-based but in the UK that seemed to be, again, very similar to me like it was in the Catholic Church. It was like, if we’re going to open the Bible today, it’s because, I don’t know, we need to wedge a door open kind of thing. There was very little reference to the things that Scripture was saying.
It was much more orientated towards authors who’d written books and much more feelings and experientially based rather than being grounded in the Word. And so that for us was a turning point, again, to move away from that form of worship and fellowship. And we wanted to really get to a place where we were starting to be exposed to proper Bible teaching.
And that’s when we started going to a fellowship down in London in the Westminster area, which was Calvary Chapel-based. And that was definitely more biblically sound, orientated in terms of the teaching that was going on there, but then we hit this other problem, which was that pretty much every church movement has its own eschatology, its own way of viewing the scriptures, which although it will claim to speak in terms of this is the Old Testament or these, they wouldn’t really talk in terms of the Hebrew scriptures, this is the Old Testament, that’s the way it was framed.
And yet it was still really being framed from a New Testament pre-tribulation eschatology viewpoint. And that was problematic for us because, or for me, because it didn’t make sense, because now I was reading stuff in the Hebrew scriptures and Leviticus 23 being the typical example of, here is a piece of a passage which is setting things out in a very clear way, and here is a church that is saying, you know, we do what, we go through the Bible verse by verse, you know, chapter by chapter, follow these scriptures, and it’s like, okay, but we don’t do it.
Robin 00:12:05: And when we read things like Adonai has given his people this gift of Sabbath rest, and it’s very, very close to God’s heart, and then we’re taught that it’s not really something that we need to think about now. That’s very confusing.
Gary 00:12:24: Yes.
Lynne 00:12:25: But I remember how it seemed that your, Gary, when you started to discover Torah, it was via the mo’edim (מוֹעֲדִים). Wasn’t it? You were listening to Mark Biltz and the feasts were opening up.
Gary 00:12:44: Yes, yeah.
Lynne 00:12:45: And of course Shabbat has become so precious.
Gary 00:12:48: And it’s top of the list. Shabbat is the first one in the list and people seem to disregard it because it’s kind of like, well, it’s not one of the feasts. It’s like, no, if you’re writing a list of the things that are most important, the thing that you do is at the top of the list, you put the thing that’s at the forefront in the same way that when you look at the commandments, what’s the first commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul. That’s top of the list. And so the top of the list of the mo’edim is Shabbat. And it’s no surprise that it comes around on a weekly cycle.
Robin 00:13:24: Because we can’t go any further in our life without needing to be reminded.
Grant 00:13:30: Well, you know, there’s so many people, I’ve asked this question, I’ve asked you, how did you begin to engage with Torah and make it your lifestyle? And so many say it was the Sabbath, there was the mo’edim, the mo’edim, for those of you who are unaware of it, means the appointed times.
And I mean, think about these appointed times aren’t just things where God says, this is what you do on these days. What he’s saying is, these are the times I want to meet with you. They’re engagements that we keep with God.
So it’s not like we just get together and go through some rituals. We realize God is showing up in a very special and tangible, almost a tangible way. And when we set aside these times, put everything else aside, say, I want to meet with God in these times that he’s appointed, he really shows up. It’s a life-changing experience.
Gary 00:14:27: And I think it’s funny because today, as we were traveling, we were talking about journaling and schedulers and stuff like that. And, you know, I was saying that I print off a monthly calendar to sort of keep track of what’s going on in terms of my working week and the things that are happening. But at the forefront of that, the first thing that I write into it is Shabbat, Erev Shabbat.
This is the priority because I know that everything else that I’m doing is either coming out of that or leading up to it. And I think that when we first started to discover Shabbat, it was much easier for me because I basically land on a couch or a chair somewhere.
Grant 00:15:13: I know someone like that.
Robin 00:15:15: We are mandated rest.
Grant 00:15:17: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Gary 00:15:19: Whereas Lynne would be kind of like…
Grant 00:15:22: Always something to do.
Lynne 00:15:24: There’s still stuff to do. I had to learn. But I’m so glad that I had the opportunity. It’s a beautiful day.
Robin 00:15:31: It becomes the rhythm of your life.
Lynne 00:15:32: Oh, yeah.
Grant 00:15:33: I mean, can you imagine if your boss at work, your employer, says, next Thursday afternoon at two o’clock, I want to see you in my office. I have something very important to talk to you about. And two o’clock comes and goes on Thursday, and you don’t show up. And he finds you and says, why didn’t you come to my office at 2 p.m.? Oh, there’s a ball game on. I didn’t want to miss that. And there was a sale down at the store. I wanted to hit that sale. And the boss says, well, that’s too bad. I was going to give you a raise. But I’ve rethought that.
Absolutely. God wants to meet with us because he has good things to share with us. And that particular Sabbath will never come again. So Sabbaths are…
Should I tell a little story about the Bible study group I attend on Friday mornings?
Lynne 00:16:22: Sure.
Grant 00:16:22: Yeah, we were, it’s a group of, I can officially, I’m an official old man, so it’s a group of old men. And we just get together up here at the corner church every Friday morning at 6:30 a.m. And then we’ll take a book of the Bible and just read a chapter each week and just talk about it.
Lynne 00:16:39: And Gary got to join you.
Grant 00:16:40: Yes, for two weeks, which was amazing.
So anyways, as we were going through the book of Exodus, we came to chapter 20 and the Ten Commandments. We were talking about the Ten Commandments. And just kind of played the devil’s, maybe I should say God’s advocate, I said, which of the 10 do you think is the biggest threat to Satan? In other words, if you were the devil and you were allowed to remove one commandment from the 10, which one would you take out?
And they really started thinking, some said, would it be don’t murder? Adultery or murder or theft. And then they looked at me and said, well, which one would you take out? And I said, well, which one did Satan take out? They said, the Sabbath. I said, exactly. And they said, why is that so important?
I said, well, the Sabbath is one day out of seven. So that’s one seventh of your life. Can you imagine what your life would be like if you took one seventh of your life, one 24-hour period a week, and you stepped away from the world and devoted it completely to family, to your marriage, to prayer, relationships, fellowship with other believers, to studying the word, spending time with your kids, and just devoted completely to God’s stuff. I said, the other nine would be pretty easy to keep, wouldn’t it?
They all agreed. And I think we really underestimate the power of the Sabbath day of devoting your life to keeping that. So anyways, that’s my little—
Lynne 00:18:17: That has been so much of our conversation together.
Robin 00:18:20: Yes.
Lynne 00:18:20: The ways in which we’ve grown more aware and grateful that we are aware.
Robin 00:18:28: And Lynne, one of the things, the many things I admire about your life is that you care about the essence of things, not just the way things look from the outside. And you and I have chatted a bit about how important it is to guard this sacred time, but not in a way that’s militant or off-putting to people. Do you mind just sharing some of the secrets that you’ve learned along the way of how this can work into your rhythm of life without becoming awkward for you or for others?
Lynne 00:19:04: I think there’s a wonderful way in which you work up through the week, you work up to Shabbat, and so the planning that comes in for, how you’re going to do the food so that you’re not doing too much rushing around on Shabbat yourself, to have everything ready beforehand. It really is, we talked about it before in terms of patrolling the borders of Shabbat.
And one daft little example, but it’s really effective. So in the kitchen we have a blackboard and when I use the last of something I scribble it on the board so that I know when we’re shopping next that’s something we need to pick up. I never write on that board on Shabbat because on Shabbat I have everything that I need. We have everything that we need.
Gary 00:19:47: There’s nothing lacking.
Lynne 00:19:48: Absolutely not. And we’ll also make sure to go out for a walk together which doesn’t necessarily always happen during the week and we’ll do that early before there are many people out because that starts to change. When you’re out amongst those who aren’t keeping Shabbat, it changes the tone.
Gary 00:20:06: Yes, it does. So that’s another key piece. And the little rituals that you have within Shabbat, so candle lighting Friday evening, the people you gather with on Shabbat. And I know for us, because it will be the two of us during the day and then we study together with the group in the evening, but during the day the conversations that we’re able to have from the Parsha usually, but other things also, but also connecting the things from our work week to try and understand that for the week we’re going into, the things that you learn from the Parsha and how they impact on daily life.
Those conversations are way deeper than they tend to be in the week. And it is this idea of that additional soul that comes to be with you. We feel that so definitely and it’s precious.
Robin 00:20:59: And I think one of the other things practically has been how it’s not that we isolate ourselves, but we, so I guess the analogy for us is we got rid of our TV back in 2002 and that came off the back of, unfortunately, a bereavement. But when we had taken time out from having the TV on, we then got to this place of, we arrived back home and the first thing that happened was the television went on.
And I think within 10 minutes the television went off again because all of a sudden it felt like this invasion of space. And the analogy that I used at the time was if any of the people that we see on TV actually came and knocked on our front door, would we allow them into our house? And the answer of course was no. So why would you then allow them into your house freely without any sense of asking them questions about why are you here, what are you here to do? They just bring all of their issues, all of their problems.
And I think that has increased today exponentially because of the devices that we have. And so we make sure pretty much that our phones are turned off, that our computers are zero access. We might need to use them because I’ve got to send out a Zoom link to the group or something along those lines. But as a general rule, the space that we occupy is not invaded by the outside world.
And that’s also been very much part of our mindset towards how Shabbat should be, because we want to gather with people and with friends, and our friends are actually the books that we have in front of us as well. And to not be disturbed by interruptions that are unnecessary. Unless it’s an ox in the ditch type scenario, that stuff can all wait.
And it’s different, I think, for us because we don’t have a family, so therefore we don’t have small children and all of that. But I think even then, it’s easy to make an excuse. And in fact, you know, train up a child in the way they should go.
Grant 00:23:10: I have a question for you while I listen to your talk. Did you find Shabbat at the beginning a difficult thing to enter into? Was it kind of like, what was your experience when you first decided let’s keep this up? Let’s just try this. Let’s try this. Was it easy? Was it hard?
Lynne 00:23:29: I remember that first Shabbat, and as you said, Gary, you find it very easy. So there you are, stretched out on the couch, breathing, happy as Larry. And I’m thinking, I’m not doing anything, I’m uncomfortable, so I take myself for a walk. And it was a beautiful walk around the countryside where we lived. I remember coming back around, passing houses, one of the houses had outside the front apples, fallen apples that they just offered. And I picked a couple of apples because I thought, well, maybe bake those another day.
Gary 00:24:03: Like productive?
Lynne 00:24:05: Yes, yes. But that was the last time that happened. And then gradually, often a way into it but…
Gary 00:24:12: Well yeah and I think so for me I think it’s it is just maintaining the discipline so on the one hand I can immerse myself in a book as an example and that sounds idyllic in a Shabbat sense but actually that’s not really what it’s about and I think that as we’ve grown in this together, we’ve realised that in fact it’s us, it’s Lynne and I joining together in this process and therefore not seeking to isolate ourselves but actually to come together.
And I think that’s the essence of then you see within fellowships, this idea of having fellowship, but as you’ll be aware that when you come together for fellowship, that can create its own sense of busyness and you know you’re thinking about, and you’re not actually thinking about Shabbat, you’re thinking about have we got all the things that we need for the service.
Grant 00:25:13: We have enough paper plates.
Gary 00:25:13: Exactly, all of that stuff. And so it’s very easy to get trapped into something that you feel is justifiable because it’s part of what we do for service and for fellowship. But in fact, in its own right, it’s a kind of, it’s almost like sort of Screwtape Letters. You can imagine Screwtape receiving this letter saying, and make sure that the people who are actually thinking that they’re practicing Shabbat are in fact not practicing Shabbat because they’re being so busy about preparing for Shabbat and doing Shabbat. And it’s kind of like in the way that they think that they should be doing, but in fact is no different from anything that they would be doing. And so you come away from it exhausted.
Robin 00:25:54: Practice to realize, like we were, you mentioned productivity and we mentioned feeling like we need to do something, Lynne, because I tend to be the same. But we are being productive, but in a different way. And it took me years to understand, I’m still working on it. It isn’t that we’re not accomplishing something or even building something, but it’s in the invisible kingdom, not in the visible kingdom.
Because we work so hard in our physical world, which we need to do. We’re required and called to do that. But he says, here’s a day to delight in where you can have a taste of the world to come and begin to be productive, but in an unseen world. And I love that.
Grant 00:26:43: Well, keep it for me, keeping the Sabbath really showed me in a real practical way how out of control my life is. Because I couldn’t make myself stop. And I realized the busyness and the things to do and the schedule, that was controlling me. I was not controlling it.
Robin 00:27:06: And even if you do it outwardly, it’s hard to do it in your head.
Grant 00:27:09: It is, to make yourself stop. And it’s a discipline, like you said. But what a rewarding one. But I know the first time, first few weeks we tried to keep Shabbat. I was, it was miserable for me because I mean, I can’t do this, I can’t do that. My body’s just vibrating with nervous energy to do stuff. And it’s like, stop it, be still. And begin to really take control of your life.
Robin 00:27:37: And then we can hear him, that being still and knowing. And there’s a very strong connection there.
Robin 00:27:45: Gary, you mentioned the word isolation and you mentioned the word fellowship and coming together as a concept on Sabbath. You know what? I think it’s harder for people who may be single or in a marriage relationship or in a family where they seem to feel like the Lone Ranger in desiring these things. And they think, well, if all of my family or my husband and I could be on the same page and get in the car and drive to a place where we could be with other people who agree that this is important, then this could be a special day. And I feel that. But it’s not so. Can you speak to that?
Gary 00:28:29: I think that, I think certainly if you are a single person on your own, it’s definitely harder. And I think that maybe that’s where the responsibility almost comes in for us to be able to, as couples, to then identify who those people are and be able to welcome them into a wider circle, so Erev Shabbat, having a meal together around a table.
I think that we all get into our own world and I think that even with finding a fellowship that you feel that you can settle in and be part of and not be too focused on yourself, it’s the ability to move out of yourself. So if six days of the week you’re on your own and you’re just in yourself, that’s why people will spend so much time at work.
Robin 00:29:34: Where you feel competent?
Gary 00:29:35: Exactly. And now what do I do with this? I think that that’s why things like Torah Today and various other study groups that are able to, you can access online are so important because now you can take yourself out of your normal six day a week world and enter into something that’s more special. It’s not perfect. But it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
But I think that at the very heart of it, I love the scene in The Chosen, in the first series, where you see Mary doing her first Erev Shabbat, inviting these people and not, you know, wondering who’s going to turn up and then all of a sudden, you know, a couple of the disciples turn up and then Yeshua turns up and it’s kind of like, and she doesn’t quite know what she’s doing.
I think it’s difficult for single people to feel completely comfortable, but maybe what they can do is link in with other single people and also not be afraid to say, well, rather than me feeling that I have to be invited somewhere, maybe I can do the inviting. And breaking that isolation.
Robin 00:30:57: It’s tough, I’m sure.
Grant 00:30:59: You know, well-meaning people will often ask me, I don’t know how to do it right. I’m afraid I’m not gonna do it right. And it’s like, the only way to do it wrong is to not do it. But it’s like learning how to play the piano. You’re gonna hit a lot of wrong notes, but at least you’re learning.
If you’re taking piano lessons as a little kid, your parents are delighted. He’s playing the piano, he’s making mistakes, but he’s… And God the same way with us. Oh, they’re doing Shabbat. He doesn’t care if you’re not doing it right. What is the right way?
Robin 00:31:28: Right. I love what Dennis Prager said when someone asked him, what is the consequence or the punishment, so to speak, for not keeping the Sabbath? And he said, you miss the Sabbath.
Grant 00:31:42: Absolutely.
Robin 00:31:43: Yeah, but I want to back up just a titch. And we didn’t even intend to go down this road of just talking about Sabbath, but it must be the important subject. I have one more thing for this conversation. But let’s say you are a single person and you are alone, so to speak.
I know people that do manage to put a guard around that sacred time and create little rituals that they can become more aware of the fact that they have a Father and a Beloved who is bending closer and more available than at any other point in time during the week. And they can experience a sweet connection with him. And I know people that can do it. And I want to encourage people to try to… Do you agree, Lynne?
Lynne 00:32:39: I do. We spoke about this earlier in the week, didn’t we? And how it, yes, we acknowledge it’s difficult for people on their own, but it’s those little rituals that make so much difference. And key in what you said, this thing about, you know, leaning into him, hearing his voice, and gradually, gradually finding different ways of doing that for the beauty.
Grant 00:33:01: That’s so good. Our time has flown by. Look at that. But there’s one other thing. I’d like to finish with this. As I mentioned at the beginning, Beth Tikkun put together an English version of the morning weekday prayers and the evening weekday prayers. And you two so graciously recorded those for us. Gary, you did the morning prayers, and Lynne, you did the evening prayers.
And I know that praying through the liturgy and embracing the traditional prayers of Israel and the first century believers is a very important part of your life. So starting with you, Gary, since you did the morning prayers, can you just give a word of encouragement or a story of how this has impacted you and to encourage other people to really incorporate these into their daily lives?
Gary 00:33:56: So like I said earlier, I kind of grew up in Catholic Church and so liturgy was really, really important there. But it got to the point of being meaningless. I actually left the church and then six, seven years later went into a service and I could straight off the bat recite everything that was going on and it was as if it had just been…
Robin 00:34:20: Like a parrot.
Gary 00:34:20: Yeah, it was like, but there was no real meaning to what I was doing. Now, when I take time to actually meditate on the Siddur (סִדּוּר), when I take time to meditate on the words, there are two things that happen.
First and foremost, I have this recognition of the fact that I am now communicating with the Creator, but I’m also standing in the presence of all of those other people in the world who are doing this as well. And that’s even more present when we come to doing the liturgy, when we gather together and do Rosh Chodesh (רֹאשׁ חֹדֶשׁ), when we do a little stripped down version, but you just recognize that God is hearing this collective voice. He’s not just hearing your voice, he’s hearing a collective voice.
Robin 00:35:10: And you’re part of something so much bigger than yourself.
Gary 00:35:13: Absolutely. And it reminds me of the time of the Exodus where God says, you know, I’ve heard the cries of the people, not the cries of a person, but the cries of the people, because there is an expression of desire, need, just even desperation almost, where are you? Where are you in all of this? When is the rescue coming?
And I think particularly now, we are aware of that in the world, where people are feeling so desperate, they’re crying out and they’re saying, God, where are you in all of this? And he’s saying, I’m right here, but I’m the one who covers you. The liturgical prayers are a covering. They’re not just parroting words.
And I think a lot of people get really bogged down by the thing of what it says in the New Testament about, you know, this sort of repetition without meaning. And it’s like the meaning comes from the heart that you go into this with. If you just think that this is a religious process, then you are going to miss the point of it.
However, even if you start in that point of it being, I’m doing this because it’s a religious process, okay, that’s fine. Meditate on the words, meditate on Adon Olam (אֲדוֹן עוֹלָם), Lord of the World.
Robin 00:36:39: That alone can carry through a whole day.
Gary 00:36:43: Absolutely, yeah. And we do the Hareini Mekasher (הֲרֵינִי מְקַשֵּׁר), but we’ve actually changed the words slightly. So rather than “I hereby bind myself to the Master,” or “I hereby join myself to the Master,” we’ve changed the words slightly and we’ve made it a collective. We’ve said “we hereby join ourselves, bind ourselves.”
So it’s, and I’m just really conscious of the fact that the Father wants us to bind ourselves to Him. To join, to not just join, I can join in with something because I’m present, but actually to bind myself to this day.
Robin 00:37:22: Identify.
Gary 00:37:24: Identify, absolutely. So we make it a plural. It’s us together. We hereby bind. We do this together.
And I think that that’s, and for me, coming into the liturgy of the Siddur straight away, as soon as I first heard it, as soon as you gave us a copy of the Beth Tikkun Siddur, there was just this rising up in my spirit and in my soul, and it was like, Father, these words, they’re true as well as being an expression of fellowship together.
And I think it goes back to your question earlier, Robin, about people may feel that they’re on their own, but when they join together in the liturgy, if they can imagine themselves standing in the room with many others.
Robin 00:38:16: Because it is true.
Gary 00:38:18: Exactly. In that invisible realm. And it’s like being able to take their spiritual eyes rather than their physical eyes and seeing themselves standing on their own, but to imagine themselves standing with others, then that isolation disappears.
Robin 00:38:32: Absolutely.
Grant 00:38:33: Lynne, I’m going to go to you next and we’ll give you the final word on this. One of the things that comes to mind when I think of the evening prayers, which are pretty short compared to the morning, a number of times over the years, I’ve had people say they have so much trouble sleeping, or they’re troubled by nightmares. And just, it’s like nighttime they dread because when they go to bed, it’s like their brains fill up with stuff that just keeps them awake. And I say, do the evening prayers. I said, listen to the evening prayers while you go to sleep. And it transforms their sleep. What has been your experience, especially with the evening prayers?
Lynne 00:39:16: Well, even as you say that, while I was listening to Gary and I was thinking about what is there for me in the evening prayers that’s similar. And it was just this thing. It’s such a safe, secure place to be held after a busy day. And how that can help you to lead into sleep.
It sort of sets the tone for us and you know maybe you’re not straight to sleep immediately after you’ve finished praying that prayer but that’s from that place you might start to think of all the things you’re thankful for from the day and from your life as a whole and that’s such a good way to drift into sleep rather than letting your wild thoughts, just the thoughts of the day take you in all sorts of places where you’re then working again.
But I find an additionally wonderful part of the evening prayers is dealing with forgiveness. So keeping things really short accounts, clean, those things are dealt with, that’s so good.
Grant 00:40:21: That’s good.
Robin 00:40:21: Well I know that when I listen and I hear you praying these evening prayers in the recording, you can really tell this is a person to whom these are not just words, that this is someone who’s experienced the power of these prayers in their life. So I just want to thank you for that, both of you, because your sincerity comes across in your voices as you lead us in these prayers.
Gary 00:40:45: Thank you. So I’m sorry, I’m going to…
Grant 00:40:47: Go ahead.
Gary 00:40:47: As is my usual…
Grant 00:40:49: You said you were going to give Lynne the last word, and it’s not that I want to steal that from her.
Gary 00:40:55: It was a theory. But just to follow on from what Lynne’s saying, I think that, and again, it comes from the conversations that we’ve had during the last couple of weeks. You know, we all have this trouble with the videotape that we replay in our minds.
Lynne 00:41:13: Oh, yes. And you mean that’s not just me?
Gary 00:41:15: No, you are not alone. Absolutely. And I think that that is something that really comes across through the Bedtime Shema (קְרִיאַת שְׁמַע עַל הַמִּטָּה), that there is this ability to actually think about those words.
And first and foremost, if you have troubled thoughts, you know, there’s Psalm 91, and it’s telling you very clearly how God is protecting you. But then also there’s this other part, which is, you know, “may my soul be as dust to those who I’ve hurt, who I’ve received hurt from,” just to kind of, and draw a line under that.
And I think that, again, for many people in isolation, but in marriages as well, that they spend so much time replaying the video of the day or past events or worrying about how things are and where we’re going. And it’s kind of like, without trying to sound condemnatory, that’s not faith. That’s not bitachon (בִּטָּחוֹן), trust, which we’ve talked about.
Trusting in Hashem means that we actually set these things down and we don’t let our troubled thoughts… You know, I think you chose well to choose Lynne to be the voice of the evening. You know, Lynne will rest you into sleep. I’ll be the clarion call to get you up!
Lynne 00:42:47: Oh, and Lynne, I’m with you in terms of the importance of just allowing yourself to fall into that safe place. And it’s always a place that’s there. And it never changes. No matter where I am, physically or spiritually or emotionally, that place is always there for us.
Robin 00:43:08: It is.
Lynne 00:43:09: And we return and we go, oh, there’s that familiar hug. And I know all is well. What in the world could be better?
Robin 00:43:17: Well put. No, we thought, how are we going to fill up 30 minutes? 45 have gone by and it seems like it’s been 60 seconds. This has been wonderful.
I know you have a plane to catch in a few hours, which means we’ll have to be saying our goodbyes soon. But thank you so much for sitting down and just sharing your lives with Torah Today.
Lynne 00:43:41: I have an idea. Can I be impulsive here?
Robin 00:43:44: Absolutely.
Lynne 00:43:44: I know that you’ve committed the Hareini to memory.
Gary 00:43:48: No, I haven’t.
Lynne 00:43:50: No? I was going to have that spoken, but.
Gary 00:43:56: But, maybe, I mean…
Lynne 00:43:59: Between us.
Gary 00:43:59: Yeah.
Grant 00:44:00: Yes, we can do it.
Gary 00:44:01: Let’s do it. Yeah.
Grant 00:44:02: The “we” or the “I”? I think that we are however you are.
Gary 00:44:07: So we hereby bind ourselves to the Master, Yeshua the Messiah, the righteous one, who is the Bread of Life and the true Light, the source of eternal salvation for all those who hear him. Like a branch that remains in the vine, so we remain in him, just as he also remains in us and the Father in him, in order that they may remain in us.
Grant 00:44:34: Yes. And we hereby receive upon ourselves his yoke to love Adonai our God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and with all of our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And may the grace of the Messiah, Yeshua the Messiah, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit abound to us. Amen.
Gary 00:45:00: Well done. Yeah, oh, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.
Robin 00:45:05: And there’s strength in numbers.
Gary 00:45:07: It is. And you know, we want to thank you also for the time, not just that we’ve had over this last couple of weeks. You know, we’ve been desperately trying to get out here for the last seven years.
Robin 00:45:19: Been glorious.
Gary 00:45:21: To actually spend time together. But also, you know, Grant, Robin, the times when we hear your voices, right from the get-go, when we were first listening to the teachings of Beth Tikkun, it has filled our hearts with such encouragement and joy and just a desire to walk even more closely with Hashem and with his Messiah, Yeshua, and you have opened the door to so many beautiful things.
And so we want to thank you for that as well because, and I think I would echo that for all of those who listened to Torah Today and for all of those who listened to the teachings of Beth Tikkun over the past and for everything that’s going to happen in the future because you have created a pathway for us to walk in which wouldn’t exist unless you had desired the things that you’ve desired from Father and being obedient to him. And so we want to thank you for bringing us to this point as well.
Grant 00:46:26: And for living it.
Robin 00:46:27: And we’re so thankful to have friends like you all that we can walk this pathway with because we get just as much encouragement from you.
Grant 00:46:37: But it’d be so much easier to walk this path with you if you moved to the United States.
Robin 00:46:41: Grant’s been trying to talk them into this, folks.
Grant 00:46:43: There are a lot of places for sale.
Grant 00:46:45: Wonderful. Well, just to everyone who’s listening, if you would like to get a copy of the prayers and print them out, again, go to our website, torahtodayministries.org. Go to the resources page and you can print out the Siddur there for your own use. And there are links there to where you can listen to the prayers online. Or you can, as I said earlier, drop us a line with your name and address. We’ll be happy to send you a copy of the CDs.
So any last words, Robin?
Robin 00:47:24: Oh, it’s just been a joy.
Grant 00:47:25: It is.
Robin 00:47:26: And shalom to all of you.
Grant 00:47:28: Yes, shalom and may God bless.
Gary 00:47:31: Bye-bye now.
AUDIO ONLY