Dear all,
I was in a restaurant last week and gazed at my up-side-down reflection against a concave spoon. I was looking forward and looking backward at the same time. It made me think about two questions as we enter 2018.
1) What did I do or see that brought meaning in 2017?
And …
2) How will the world be better because of me in 2018?
The questions are similar – but they are not the same. The first is about being reflective. The second is about creating purpose. Midrash teaches that the world is a finely balanced scale between good and evil.
But we don’t want the scale to be balanced. We want to weigh it with goodness.
It takes careful introspection to live a life with purpose. But it takes a moment in time to tip the scale through each and every interaction.
No one can create goodness the way you can.
Make the world different. Make it better. Make it holy!
With love and shalom,
Rabbi Zach Shapiro
A change in perspective can shift the focus of our day – and even our lives. We have an opportunity to harness “a moment in time,” allowing our souls to be both grounded and lifted. This blog shows how the simplest of daily experiences can become the most meaningful of life’s blessings. All it takes is a moment in time.
Rabbi Zach Shapiro is the Spiritual Leader of Temple Akiba, a Reform Jewish Congregation in Culver City, CA. He earned his B.A. in Spanish from Colby College in 1992, and his M.A.H.L. from HUC-JIR in 1996. He was ordained from HUC-JIR – Cincinnati, in 1997.
