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Thought for the Day: תחית המתים Every Second of Your Life

There is an old joke. The driver says to his blonde passenger, "Oh, no... I just glimpsed a police car in the rear view mirror! Are his lights flashing!" The blonde passenger turns around to look and reports, "No. Wait.. yes! No. Hmm... yes. No. Yes..."

Ha ha. A blinking light means sometimes on and sometimes off; silly blonde. However, on further thought, the light really isn't blinking. It is either on or off. "Blinking" is a word we use to describe something that we expect to turn back on after it turns off. If it fails to either turn on or off, but just stays in one state, it's not blinking. Again, though, that is our expectation that is failing, not the light. Maybe the jokes not on the blonde, after all; but on us.

In case you don't know how blood flows around the body, let me give you a simplified explanation. The heart has four chambers, the top two chambers are a staging area for the bottom two chambers. When the top two chambers are filled with blood, the top of the heart squeezes (that's the "lub" of the "lub-dub" of a beating heart) and smooshes the blood into the lower two chambers. Once the blood is wrung out of the top chambers and the lower chambers are filled, then the bottom of the heart squeezes (which is the "dub") -- forcing blood out of the heart; the right side flows to the lungs, the left to the entire body. Then the heart sits there and waits for the top to get filled again.

How does the top get filled again? The circulatory system is a closed system. When blood get pushed on one end, it moves everywhere. When the bottom of the heart wrings out its blood, that blood pushes the blood already in the lungs into the upper left chamber of the heart and the blood throughout the body into the upper right chamber. All terribly mechanical and simple to understand. Just needs one thing... for the heart to beat again.

In a very real sense, the heart stops each second, then starts each second. In the time it takes you to say the words at the second bracha of Shmone Esrei, ברוך אתה השםת, מחיה המתים, you have experienced a very personal תחית המתים/resurrection of your life. Each and every beat is a brand new thing. Each and every beat is a renewal/rejuvenation/resurrection of your life.

Sounds a bit dramatic for your taste? How about this? Every single person since the dawn of creation who has died, was alive just one beat before that that. In that time it takes you to say מודים/thanks in Shmone Esrei, you have about 15 moments of not dying. 15 near death experiences -- just one beat away! That's 15 great reasons to give thanks.
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