30th Day of the Omer
Major Sefirah: Hod/Thanks-giving; Minor Sefirah: Gevurah/Strength; Date: 15 Iyar
I was thinking about the sun, the moon and the stars—they must be so swift to travel the entire sky every day; and every night the stars assume a new position to do some job for their Creator. They don’t slow down, ever! That takes strength.
Speaking of strength, what strength Moshe and Aharon must have. They didn’t hesitate to go speak to Pharaoh, to dedicate years to humbling themselves and doing for others, over and over. Even that young student of Moshe Rabbeinu, Nun’s son, Yehoshua, runs to be the first to take care of anything Moshe needs to have done.
I’m detecting a pattern here. If I want to thank God for success, I have to be quick to put some effort into making it!
One quick thing I already have—a quick tongue. But if I’m snappy in answering people, my tongue may find it hard to speak words of praise. And people certainly won’t be all too interested in listening to anything positive I might say to them later. I better learn to be quick in clamping my lips shut!
Not a lot of people were keeping their mouths shut today. People were complaining—a recently acquired skill since those dreaded Egyptians didn’t brook any uppityness—we ran out of food! All that matzah and dough we took with us when we left—finito. We’ve got wives and kids. What’s Moshe going to do about it?!
Well, he was pretty calm. He said that he and Aharon weren’t so special that we should complain about them. And he said that tomorrow we’re going to something special. He called it kavod Hashem, God’s glory. We’ll see.
Speaking of seeing, when I say the Shemonah Esrei blessing Re’ei (See #7) I will try to make amends for failing to see beyond the surface success of people who live it up and seem to “get away with murder.” It finally caught up with the Egyptians….
3 comments
I try to keep in mind we have one mouth with two gates (lips and teeth) and two ears that have nothing in the way.
As per the Chafetz Chaim (two security gates for the mouth), and nothing in the way of our as per the Midrash. Yasher koach.