Daily Prophets
Day 172
“Awake, awake; put on your strength, O Zion; put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city…Break forth into joy, sing together, you ruins of Jerusalem; for the Lord has comforted his people, God has redeemed Jerusalem.”(Isaiah 52:1,9).
The prophet Second Isaiah is full of good news for the people! In the first verse he is telling us to wake up! It is an imperative, I believe, not just because of the verb form, rather because we have slept through so much of our living. The Jews of Judah, and maybe even today, slept through their duties to serve God, to aid the needy and the poor, to deal justly with everyone, and most of all, to keep Jerusalem holy. Their inability to do this resulted in the destruction of the Temple, the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of their old way of living. The prophet is calling upon the city, the people and us to put on “beautiful garments”. The garments are the garments of truth, kindness, love, compassion, care, justice, service and living God’s will for us. The call then is the same as the call today. We see the “beautiful garments” of democracy starting to pull apart because of the charlatans and practitioners of mendacity and, like Jerusalem of old, we saw the breaching of the walls of our Capital. Will we heed the lessons of Jerusalem? Will we learn from the words of the prophets to return to God and our mission that we inherited from our founding fathers?
When we do, we can break into joy. What a great phrase; break into joy is the allowance of God’s promise to take root within us, and for us to live these promises daily. It is putting our hopes and dreams together with the actions necessary to make them realities, “If you will it, it isn’t a dream” Theodore Herzl said and we have the State of Israel! We are alive, we are dedicated to serving God, going beyond our own self interests and the fire of our souls are burning brighter each day, we are reconnecting with family and friends, we are moving one grain of sand, one step at a time forward each day and this is reason for joy. The greatest reason to break into joy is that God is comforting us, God has not forgotten nor forsaken us, as some people like to believe and spout. God afflicts us only as a last resort and is in pain when this happens. I woke up this morning realizing that the line from my father “this hurts me more than it hurts you” was so true. My father, z”l, was in great emotional and spiritual distress when I was so out of control that he had to discipline me. The same is true for God! God is much more the “Comforter in Chief” than the destroyer! Our connection to God is the major reason to “break into joy”. God’s redeeming is always happening, it was not just a one and done proposition. Each day when we wake up and say Modeh Ani prayer, when we get out of bed and make a plan for the day, when we love and serve and are grateful and sad, we are stating that we have been redeemed, that what we do matters, that God is within us and around us and we get to hang out with God and another(s) to break into joy and dance at our redemption. We are never so lost that we cannot return to God and be redeemed. Do we notice when we are lost and return?
“Deliverance, redemption is what the Lord has in store for Israel, and through Israel for all men. He suffering and agony are the birth pangs of salvation which the prophet proclaims, is about to unfold.”(The Prophets pg.190). As I ponder these words of Rabbi Heschel, I am struck at the wisdom and truth of them. The Rabbis in the Talmud speak of sufferings and afflictions of love and the deliverances and redemptions by God of Israel and all of us on multiple occasions, are proof of their thoughts. God doesn’t want to punish us anymore than my father wanted to punish me. Rather, the punishments were the logical consequences of my choosing a wrong path, just as it has been when Israel chose a path that led them away from God and towards idolatry. The same is true for every country that has engaged in idolatry through worshiping false gods and/or by worshipping their intellect.
In recovery, we break into joy each and every day, multiple times a day because we know and revere our redemption and deliverance. We do not take for granted this day nor our redemption; we experience both as a gift from God that is beyond our deserving and each day we repay God for the gifts of deliverance and redemption in our actions and service. In recovery we are awake and alive each and every day because we know what spiritual death looks and feels like, we know how we flirted with physical death and we are committed to life. We know that each day we have to actively CHOOSE LIFE and we rejoice in our ability to do so.
I also have needed to awake in my recovery at different times. As I am writing this, I am awake to the gifts, the deliverances and the redemptions that God has given to me, I am aware of the Grace that is granted to me and I am committed to opening my eyes more and more each day to gain new clarity, aka serenity, so as to serve God more and better each day. I am also awaken to new possibilities, I am aware that the pain and exile I have been through, while carried out by humans, were God’s way of getting my attention. It is time to let go of the old and see what is my next action to help and serve God in new and different ways. I have been redeemed through letting go of the past and focusing on today and tomorrow. Living in radical amazement is allowing me to hear and see God’s deliverance and redemption in new and beautiful ways. I pray you are awake enough to rejoice in God’s deliverance and redemption of you as well. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark