Birthday Candles and Tisha B’Av
Today is my birthday.
Another day I get to thank my Maker for giving me the precious gift of breath in these lungs. Every year is testimony to God’s kindness. Our Creator is outrageously gracious.
This year my birthday happens to fall on Tisha B’Av. While I celebrate life, another people mourn over what the world lost.
Two Calendars
Tisha B’Av is the day the Jewish people remember the destruction of both temples in Jerusalem, which amazingly occurred on the same day hundreds of years apart. They also mourn the suffering, exile, and heartbreaking loss of life that followed. It is a day marked by fasting, lament, and remembrance. Generation after generation, Jewish families hold this grief, refusing to forget the place where God has caused his name to dwell.
For me, this year is a real juxtaposition. One calendar tells me to celebrate; the other invites me to mourn.
The Chapter I Almost Cut
Last year, my birthday looked very different.
At my request, my husband took the day off work and took the kids out for several hours, giving me precious, uninterrupted time to work on my book. This time last year, I was nearing the final draft of The Forgotten Gospel, feverishly summing up chapter 11 and nervously preparing to hand off the entire manuscript my editor. When his comments eventually came back—overwhelming me with thoughtful criticism—I revised nearly everything he pointed out. But there was one suggestion I struggled with.
He urged me to remove chapter 11, Why Don’t We Have a Temple Today, entirely.
His reasoning was understandable. The chapter ventured into difficult territory—Israel, the Temple Mount, the land, Zionism—questions that lean political in the minds of most readers. In his mind, it belonged in a different book.
I mulled over his advice for weeks, but in the end, I retained the chapter in full. I couldn’t bring myself to put forward a book about Leviticus while ignoring the question of the temple’s place in our day, a loss that sits at odds with both Leviticus’s story and it’s hope.
My book argues that Leviticus is not merely a collection of ancient rituals expired at the cross, but the beating heart of the story about a holy God choosing to dwell among his people. The sacrifices, the priesthood, the festivals, the laws—they all orbit one glorious reality: Yahweh living in the midst of Israel.
Today, for a number of reasons, that reality remains painfully out of reach.
Maybe it’s nostalgia, but it feels a bit providential that a year later—after wrestling with such an divisive topic and wondering whether to include it in my book at all—my birthday would fall on Tisha B'Av, the day of mourning the loss that is God’s earthly abode.
How would I feel today, I wonder, had I convinced myself to remove that chapter because it was “too political?” “Too disconnected” for readers from the gospel, from all God is doing through his Messiah?
To me, and to many others, the temple is the crown jewel in God’s beautiful plan to redeem and restore all things.
Had I removed the chapter, I fear I may have spent today doing what my book ultimately cautions its readers against: celebrating God's faithfulness to me while remaining indifferent to the people and place through whom God promises to work in the world.
The Fallen Tent at the Center
Without the temple, Israel cannot experience the covenant fullness of God's promised dwelling among them. And if God is not dwelling in the midst of his people in the way he promised, his covenant purposes remain publicly unfinished before the nations.
Moses himself appealed to this very concern. If Yahweh abandoned his people in the wilderness, the surrounding nations would conclude that he was unable to fulfill the promises he had made (Numbers 14:13–16).
Centuries later, Ezekiel looked beyond exile to the day those promises would finally reach their fulfillment:
"My dwelling place shall be with them... Then the nations will know that I am Yahweh who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore" (Ezekiel 37:26–28).
The Jerusalem temple has never been merely about Israel. It is also God’s witness to the nations that he is faithful to every word he has spoken.
While I may have spent last year wrangling the words to explain all this, this year, Tisha B’Av teaches me to hold gratitude and longing together—to rejoice in the salvation God has already accomplished and to pray with greater urgency for the restoration yet to come.
Whether it’s Leviticus, the temple, or the biblical narrative itself, I remain convinced that none of it is a story whose central hope has been transcended, transferred, or “fulfilled in Christ,” but the ongoing oaths of a Living God whose promises are still moving toward their great destination.
The Hope
As a disciple of Jesus, I rejoice in the astonishing realities revealed in the risen Messiah. A small foretaste of God’s Spirit has been unleashed in the world, reaching far beyond the walls of a temple complex. He dwells with people in ways that surpass what anyone expected. Those truths are as life-changing as they are beautiful.
But celebrating the worship of Yahweh “in Spirit and truth” and living in the light of the Master’s resurrection does not require me to dismiss the grief of another people whom my God repeatedly promises—and commands—to long for the day his presence will once again dwell among them in Zion.
In fact, I believe the opposite is true.
The prophets envision a future in which Messiah restores the ruins of the ancient walls. The God who once filled the tabernacle, Solomon’s temple, and the devout Jews gathered at the temple in Acts 2 has not abandoned his promises.
The greatest hope of our faith is the hope to which Leviticus points: that God will dwell fully with his people forever. We long for the day when all creation is redeemed—when the presence of Yahweh fills the earth as the waters cover the sea. We long for the day when God's dwelling is once again in the midst of his people, and the nations finally know him as he promised.
Tisha B'Av is not in competition with the gospel. It is the lament of its heart—a sorrowful hope in the very good news the temple reflects: here on earth as it is in heaven.
Gratitude and Longing
On this twenty-third of July, I have much to celebrate: another year of life, a beautiful family, a published book—complete with chapter 11, a chapter I am not ashamed put in front of my readers. Perhaps it can inspire us all to pray with greater compassion for a people who still safeguard the heart of what the world lost so many years ago.
Birthdays teach me that life is finite. But resurrection teaches me that death is not the end. I rejoice because I know that one day I, too, will be born again—this time, to immortality in a day where we mourn the fallen tent of David no more.
Tisha B'Av likewise reminds me that things are finite, death is real, and loss is painful. But faith reminds me that my God can rebuild the ancient ruins. Like Adam and Eve—bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh—the heavenly sanctuary and its earthly counterpart mirror each other. Distinct, yet inseparable. One reflecting the glory of the other until the great mystery is complete, and Yahweh brings them together in shalom.
Oh dear God, I thank you for another year of life and vitality, merited only by your incredible kindness. Thank you for your faithfulness through seasons of both joy and sorrow, of mourning and dancing.
And today, on a day of joy and of solemn day of remembrance, I join my prayers with your people. Comfort those who mourn in Zion, who mourn outside of Zion. Remember your covenant with their fathers. And Lord, hasten the day when your promises are fulfilled, your presence once again fills your holy place, and mourning gives way to everlasting joy.
Until that day comes, I pray that my life—every birthday you grant me now, and every moment in the resurrection—be spent singing and writing and prophesying of your great and unfailing faithfulness.
“You have turned my mourning into dancing... O Yahweh my God, I will give thanks to you forever.” (Psalm 30:11–12)