“Come,” said the teacher.

“Where?” I asked.

“Up,” he answered. “Up a mountain.”

He then took me on a half-hour journey through the desert to a particularly high mountain.

“Let us go up,” he said.

So we did. There was nothing easy about it. I had to rest several times, just to catch my breath. Finally we made it to the top.

“Look at that,” he said, pointing to the majestic panorama before us. “It’s something you can only see from up here, from the heights. It was worth the climb. Do you know what it’s called in Hebrew, what we just did?”

“Torture?”

“No,” he said, “it’s called aliyah. It means the going up, the ascent. When you read in the Scriptures of Messiah going to Jerusalem, you’ll find the word up used over and over again. Why is that? Jerusalem is a city set on the mountains. So to get there, you have to go up. So the journey to Jerusalem is called Aliyah…the ascending. And it was not only because of the physical terrain but because Jerusalem is the Holy City. So to go to Jerusalem is to make Aliyah. In the modern age, when the Jewish people began to return to the land of Israel, the return was called Aliyah. Going to the Promised Land was known as ‘making Aliyah,’ ‘the upward journey.’ The children on Israel were commanded to make Aliyah. But those who are of Messiah are the spiritual children of Israel. So what would that mean?”

“They also have an Aliyah to make?”

“Yes,” said the teacher, “but a spiritual people must make a spiritual journey.”

“So what’s the journey?” I asked. “What’s the Aliyah?”

“Your life,” said the teacher. “Your entire life is the Aliyah. Your life is a journey, but in God it is to be an upward journey…an ever higher ascending. How do you do that? The same way you ascended the mountain. Every day you will be given choices. Every choice will give you the chance to go lower, to stay the same, or to go higher. Choose the higher path, even if it’s harder, take the higher step…let each of your steps be higher than the step before it. And you will end up walking on the mountain heights…and your life will be an Aliyah.”

The Mission: Today, choose the higher step, the higher act, the higher ground, the higher path in every decision. Start making your life an Aliyah.

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Psalm 121; Mark 10:32

“The Aliyah Mystery” – The Book of Mysteries

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ברוך אתה, אדוננו, שליט היקום