Dear all,
A story is told of the great 20th century theologian, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. One day, as he was teaching a group of rabbinical students, he asked them, “Did you witness a miracle today?”
The students pondered his question. None of them had witnessed the parting of the Sea of Reeds or Revelation of the Torah from Mt. Sinai.
Rabbi Heschel then asked, “Didn’t you see the sun rise this morning?”
For Rabbi Heschel, it wasn’t so much that the sun rose. It’s that humanity has the capacity to witness it (if we look).
I thought about this when snow fell in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago. You see, the miracle isn’t that it snowed. (Sure, it’s rare.) The miracle is that so many people had wonderment in their hearts because of the snow.
It probably won’t snow in LA again for another 35 years. So where will you find your wonderment in noticing the beauty of nature? It only takes a moment in time to capture the miracles that abound each day!
With love and shalom,
Rabbi Zach Shapiro
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