A day at Shevet Achim starts at 8:00 am with prayer, worship and bible reading. We set aside the first 2 hours of the day for praising God. The main language of prayer is English, but we can pray in our own languages too. Some pray in Spanish, and I pray in Japanese. We worship mainly in English but sometimes in Hebrew.

We take a short break around 9:00 and then read the bible together (we were reading 1 Corinthians until last week, and now are in Matthew). We then just share whatever God spoke to us freely. Some people connect different parts of the Bible finding allusions for a deeper truth, and others speak about their own experiences with God. We are from different parts of the world with different church systems, so listening to other people’s thoughts and ideas is very interesting. People come and go at Shevet Achim. German lady who works in Tel Aviv and serves once a week with us, a kind Jewish young man who speaks Hebrew, Arabic and English and helps us at an emergency, an American doctor who escorted a sick Syrian refugee child to Shevet. We just met once (and sometimes that is the last), but the God’s Word is the common language. The fact that we can start sharing at a deeper level right away is pretty amazing. The Bible has been translated into various languages, people in the world have been reading the same God’s Word, the Word lives in each one of us, and the Word connects us responding to each other. What a wonderous thing! I thought of the vision verse of Shevet Achim (=dwelling together).

How good and pleasant it is

when brothers live together in unity!

Psalm 133:1

This 2 hour quiet time with God is the driving force of Shevet. Some of us sometimes have to leave for a hospital visit early in the morning and have to miss this, and we might not have all the members for this gathering, but still whoever remaining spend this time together. The first 2 hours of our day set apart for God. We can really never accomplish anything without this.