Skip to main content

Thought for the Day: HaShem Gives Your T'filos As Much Attention As You Do

One of the perks of writing down a thought or two each day is that is helps me to crystalize that thought and give it a permanence in my my psyche.  It also helps me to keep focus when listening to a shiur, because when I hear an interesting idea I immediately think about how to condense it into a paragraph or two.  I discovered a downside to that process this morning, when I started listening to a set of shiurim from R' Efraim Twerski of Khal Chasidim on t'fila.  The downside is that during the time it takes to contemplate how to best express an interesting chidush, three more interesting chidushim have been expressed.  Oh well... I'll try my best.

T'fila, notes R' Twerski, is the defining attribute being human.  Animals communicate; animals even talk.  Only humans pray.  One would think, therefore, that prayer would be among those things in which we take most pride.  Yet, Chazal tell us and experience confirms, prayer is largely taken for granted and relegated to one of those things "we have do do... sigh..."  What went wrong?  Perhaps (agian notes R' Twerki) it is the fact that we don't feel our prayers are answered.  He gives three reasons why prayer may go unanswered.

First, maybe it would be bad for you to get what you are requesting.  Over Yom Tov, my granddaughter asked a few times from more sweets.  Sometimes her parents declined her request; even when she cried bitter tears or batted her beautiful eyes and said "pleease", they were intransigent.  Another way to put this is not that HaShem didn't answer, but that HaShem answered "no".  (Sounds much better in yiddish.  The chasid complained to the rebbi, "HaShem antvort nisht!"  The rebbi replied, "Nein.  HaShem antvort -- nisht!"

A second reason could be that HaShem treats us mida k'neged mida; HaShem pays as much attention to our prayers and gives them the same consideration as we do.  Do you weigh every word, contemplate its meaning, and pray with complete attention; mind, heart, and tongue working as a  unit?  Or is it, "let's chahp (grab) a mincha", "aargh... this shalich tzibur is soo slow... why is chazaras ha'shatz taking more then 67 seconds!?  I have important places to be and important things to do!"  HaShem's response is, well, appropriately aligned.

Finally, Chazal have told us that the gates of prayer are locked; only the gate of tears is never locked.  If your prayer is not said fervently enough to evoke tears, then maybe it's just not getting in.  On that, though, the Satmar Rav asks that if the gates are locked, what's the point of davening if you know you aren't going to come to tears?  Maybe just figure, "oh well, maybe next time".  The Satmar Rav answers from a Chazal that refers to t'fila as one of those things that matters that stands at the heights of Creation, yet people disparage them.  The t'filos are standing at the heights of Creation, he says, waiting with anticipation for your tears to open the gates.

Perhaps we can use that to put all three reasons together (my own thought, don't blame R' Twerski for this one):  When a t'fila is for something that isn't appropriate or comes with inadequate kavana, HaShem doesn't ignore it, He sets it by your gate of t'fila.  When you are moved to daven with such fervor that you come to tears, the gates are opened and those t'filos flow like the opening of flood gates.  But more than that, since you couldn't have been moved to daven like that without all the preparation and practice from those previous t'filos, every single t'fila is now raised to the level of a prayer said with full intention, full concentration, and the full emotion that comes with crying.

A flood like that can change worlds.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Day: Love in the Time of Corona Virus/Anxiously Awaiting the Mashiach

Two scenarios: Scenario I: A young boy awakened in the middle of the night, placed in the back of vehicle, told not to make any noise, and the vehicle speeds off down the highway. Scenario II: Young boy playing in park goes to see firetruck, turns around to see scary man in angry pursuit, poised to attack. I experienced and lived through both of those scenarios. Terrifying, no? Actually, no; and my picture was never on a milk carton. Here's the context: Scenario I: We addressed both set of our grandparents as "grandma" and "grandpa". How did we distinguish? One set lived less than a half hour's drive; those were there "close grandma and grandpa". The other set lived five hour drive away; they were the "way far away grandma and grandpa". To make the trip the most pleasant for all of us, Dad would wake up my brother and I at 4:00AM, we'd groggily -- but with excitement! -- wander out and down to the garage where we'd crawl
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: אוושא מילתא Debases Yours Shabbos

My granddaughter came home with a list the girls and phone numbers in her first grade class.  It was cute because they had made it an arts and crafts project by pasting the list to piece of construction paper cut out to look like an old desk phone and a receiver attached by a pipe cleaner.  I realized, though, that the cuteness was entirely lost on her.  She, of course, has never seen a desk phone with a receiver.  When they pretend to talk on the phone, it is on any relatively flat, rectangular object they find.  (In fact, her 18 month old brother turns every  relatively flat, rectangular object into a phone and walks around babbling into it.  Not much different than the rest of us, except his train of thought is not interrupted by someone else babbling into his ear.) I was reminded of that when my chavrusa (who has children my grandchildrens age) and I were learning about אוושא מילתא.  It came up because of a quote from the Shulchan Aruch HaRav that referred to the noise of תקתוק
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: David HaMelech's Five Stages of Finding HaShem In the World

Many of us "sing" (once you have heard what I call carrying a tune, you'll question how I can, in good conscience, use that verb, even with the quotation marks) Eishes Chayil before the Friday night Shabbos meal.  We feel like we are singing the praises of our wives.  In fact, I have also been to chasunas where the chasson proudly (sometimes even tearfully) sings Eishes Chayil to his new eishes chayil.  Beautiful.  Also wrong.  (The sentiments, of course, are not wrong; just a misunderstanding of the intent of the author of these exalted words.) Chazal (TB Brachos, 10a) tell us that when Sholmo HaMelech wrote the words "She opens her mouth Mwith wisdom; the torah of kindness is on her tongue", that he was referring to his father, Dovid HaMelech, who (I am continuing to quote Chazal here) lived in five worlds and sang a song of praise [to each].  It seems to me that "world" here means a perception of reality.  Four times Dovid had to readjust his perc
Post a Comment
Read more