This week’s Torah portion is Ki Tissa, which means.” when you take.” It begins with the taking of a census, goes on to appoint two people to oversee the work of the Tabernacle and holy vestments, and reiterates that Shabbat observance supersedes work for God on the tabernacle. Later in the portion, while Moses is gone, the people make and worship a golden calf. Moses wins forgiveness for them and has an intimate encounter with God, in which he hears a description of God’s attributes: that God is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger, forgiving, and great in kindness and truth. At the end of the portion, Moses’ face shines with divine light.
Ki Tissa is one of the few Torah portions that speaks about relationship: specifically Moses’ intimate relationship with God. While Moses is on Mt. Sinai, with the Eternal, receiving the tablet of the Ten Commandments, the people long for him to return so they can feel connected to their Divine Protector. When Moses does not return on time, they demand an idol, the Golden Calf, thus breaking their promise to God. The prophet Hosea likens the relationship of God to the Jewish people to a marriage, where God is the groom and Israel the bride. “And I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness, and judgment, and in loving kindness and compassion, I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know God. (2:21-2)
Most of Ki Tissa traces the development of Moses’ relationship to God. As in a human relationship, there is testing. God offers to kill the people and create a new nation, beginning with Moses. Moses passes the test, refusing to abandon the people and hence, refusing to abandon God. Then it is Moses’ turn to seek a deeper relationship. He repeatedly seeks out God, speaking to the Divine at the entrance to a special tent outside the camp, which Moses calls tent of meeting. At one of these encounters, Moses says, in Rashi’s translation, “If I have indeed found favor in your eyes, make you ways known to me, so that I may know you, so that I shall find favor in your eyes.” Knowing someone, in the Torah, when applied to humans, means sexual relations. Here, it describes the great longing we have for completion, for perfect union, that we occasionally find in human relationships, usually only for a short while. But we are really seeking something more universal and profound. We are all looking for the Other in which we can find the Self. Only we can’t usually distinguish romantic love from spiritual love. It all feels the same and one gets mixed up with the other. We don’t have the words to describe the feeling of love, no less the difference between the two kinds. Love is one of our highest human functions.
We literally mint the spiritual currency of the universe when we love. The whole universe works on the principle of love, the more we love the more love we experience in return. Moses, like us, wants more of the good stuff – spiritual fulfillment, through love. And he finds it, by going one step further, asking God, “Show me your glory.” God grants him a close spiritual encounter, cautioning him by saying that he must not come too close, “for no human can see me and live,” which reminds us of what we all know: the flame of love, whether romantic or spiritual, can warm or burn us. This is stated in Song of Songs: “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a sign upon your arm; for love is strong as death, Its passion as cruel as the grave. Its sparks become a raging fire. Great seas cannot extinguish love. No river can wash it away, If a man offered all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”(Chap 7)
In Moses’ close encounter, God calls out with the attributes of the essence of who God is: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, truthful, and forgiving. Like the song by Lieber and Stoller recorded by Peggy Lee, Is that all there is? We feel let down. To us it sounds good, but not great; not good enough to satisfy us. However we have to put ourselves into Moses’ experience. For him it is communion or even union, for in experiencing this intense love for the other, he has lost himself in God and found himself; not only the self he knows, but his best, highest self, which, really is what love is all about. When we find that completion, those spiritual riches in ourself, we have found peace and contentment, which can then be shared. We have enough, we’re less needy, able to give more than receive. In a paraphrase of the W.B. Yeats’ poem of 1919, the center holds, the journey is more placid, we are at home in our own skin. The love we give can bring about the peace we seek. May we give it to each other, and experience that peace.
Showing posts with label Ki Tissa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ki Tissa. Show all posts
Friday, February 21, 2014
Friday, July 6, 2012
We Were There
This week’s Torah portion is Ki Tissa, which means.” when you take.” It begins with the taking of a census, goes on to appoint two people to oversee the work of the Tabernacle and holy vestments, and reiterates that Shabbat observance supersedes work on the tabernacle for God. Later in the portion, while Moses is gone, the people make and worship a golden calf. Moses wins forgiveness for them and has an intimate encounter with God, in which he hears a description of God’s attributes: that God is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger, forgiving, and great in kindness and truth.
I’d like to tell you about something I saw while in Peru. My husband and I traveled to Cuzco, which used to be the capital of the Inca Empire. It is over 11,000 feel above sea level, where the oxygen is pretty thin. It has been called the bellybutton of the world. On one of the hills, overlooking the city of Cuzco, there is a major archeological site, whose name is Sacsayhuamán. This site dates from the middle ages, and in Inca times, probably during the 1400’s & 1500’s it was a religious site associated with the worship of the Condor. The Incas had many gods who represented what they called the 3 worlds: the sky, the earth, and the underworld, the world of death. So this site was part of the worship of the forces of the sky. It is a vast site, a very grand plateau probably the size of several football fields, capable of holding thousands of people, with three levels of undulating walls on one side. The guide for our group told us that in 1536, Francisco Pizzaro and his troops began the siege of Cuzco. It took almost a year.
At the end of the siege, the Spanish came up to Sacsayhuamán. There was a religious ritual being enacted there, in which the Inca placed grain on the ground for the condors to descend and eat. The Spanish soldiers massacred every person there: many, many people, and managed to capture a number of condors. They brought the condors down into the city and massacred them too. Thus the Spanish destroyed the religious site, the people, and the Inca religion all in one day. Later they removed stones from the walls there to build churches and cathedrals in Cuzco.
Standing there, I could feel that I was standing on holy ground. It was sanctified by the blood: the deaths of the hundreds and perhaps thousands who were killed there. And I realized that we were the ones who died and we were also the ones doing the killing. God and life are all one. We are one soul, past present, and future. Our Jewish sages have said that to God, there is no past, present, and future. This is also what Einstein believed. Einstein wrote a letter to the family of his friend, Besso, after Besso passed away. He indicated that although Besso had died before him, it was of no consequence, since "...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."
In Ki Tissa we read about the making and worship of the Golden Calf. We may fault the Israelites for their abandonment of the sole worship of one God, but we were there too: not always being able to live up to the level of our knowledge and experience; not always able to live up to our own values and ideals. We are they, but we are also Moses, who knew with a deep, natural knowing, that he must plead for the people, since they were a part of him and he of them. When Moses asked God to give him more information and let him know why Moses found favor “in God’s eyes,” God gave him what we call the 13 attributes: a description of God’s personality: They are: Being, Existence, God; compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in kindness and truth, forgiving willful sins and errors, and who cleanses, but who does not cleanse completely, allowing us to take responsibility for our decisions (the last especially, being an interpretation).
We have made progress since the worship of the Golden Calf. We have made progress since the massacre of the Inca and their sacred birds. But in our world, killing still goes on: in Sudan, in Syria, in the Congo, and elsewhere. Part of us has come so far, but not all of us. The closer we come to being gracious and kind and forgiving to each other; the closer we come to compassion, and truth; to being slower to anger, more patient and more accepting, the closer we will come to what God said to Moses: my Presence shall provide you rest. God’s Presence, that Divine Rest is what we will experience eventually; but also what we can experience occasionally, right now, out of our choosing to live from our knowledge of what we should be striving for. We have been given the goal and the answers. They are right here in Ki Tissa. We can sanctify life not only through death, but through goodness and holy action. May we choose the path of life, of beauty, and of God’s Presence, experiencing the flashes of inner peace and holiness that are truly ours to possess.
I’d like to tell you about something I saw while in Peru. My husband and I traveled to Cuzco, which used to be the capital of the Inca Empire. It is over 11,000 feel above sea level, where the oxygen is pretty thin. It has been called the bellybutton of the world. On one of the hills, overlooking the city of Cuzco, there is a major archeological site, whose name is Sacsayhuamán. This site dates from the middle ages, and in Inca times, probably during the 1400’s & 1500’s it was a religious site associated with the worship of the Condor. The Incas had many gods who represented what they called the 3 worlds: the sky, the earth, and the underworld, the world of death. So this site was part of the worship of the forces of the sky. It is a vast site, a very grand plateau probably the size of several football fields, capable of holding thousands of people, with three levels of undulating walls on one side. The guide for our group told us that in 1536, Francisco Pizzaro and his troops began the siege of Cuzco. It took almost a year.
At the end of the siege, the Spanish came up to Sacsayhuamán. There was a religious ritual being enacted there, in which the Inca placed grain on the ground for the condors to descend and eat. The Spanish soldiers massacred every person there: many, many people, and managed to capture a number of condors. They brought the condors down into the city and massacred them too. Thus the Spanish destroyed the religious site, the people, and the Inca religion all in one day. Later they removed stones from the walls there to build churches and cathedrals in Cuzco.
Standing there, I could feel that I was standing on holy ground. It was sanctified by the blood: the deaths of the hundreds and perhaps thousands who were killed there. And I realized that we were the ones who died and we were also the ones doing the killing. God and life are all one. We are one soul, past present, and future. Our Jewish sages have said that to God, there is no past, present, and future. This is also what Einstein believed. Einstein wrote a letter to the family of his friend, Besso, after Besso passed away. He indicated that although Besso had died before him, it was of no consequence, since "...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."
In Ki Tissa we read about the making and worship of the Golden Calf. We may fault the Israelites for their abandonment of the sole worship of one God, but we were there too: not always being able to live up to the level of our knowledge and experience; not always able to live up to our own values and ideals. We are they, but we are also Moses, who knew with a deep, natural knowing, that he must plead for the people, since they were a part of him and he of them. When Moses asked God to give him more information and let him know why Moses found favor “in God’s eyes,” God gave him what we call the 13 attributes: a description of God’s personality: They are: Being, Existence, God; compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in kindness and truth, forgiving willful sins and errors, and who cleanses, but who does not cleanse completely, allowing us to take responsibility for our decisions (the last especially, being an interpretation).
We have made progress since the worship of the Golden Calf. We have made progress since the massacre of the Inca and their sacred birds. But in our world, killing still goes on: in Sudan, in Syria, in the Congo, and elsewhere. Part of us has come so far, but not all of us. The closer we come to being gracious and kind and forgiving to each other; the closer we come to compassion, and truth; to being slower to anger, more patient and more accepting, the closer we will come to what God said to Moses: my Presence shall provide you rest. God’s Presence, that Divine Rest is what we will experience eventually; but also what we can experience occasionally, right now, out of our choosing to live from our knowledge of what we should be striving for. We have been given the goal and the answers. They are right here in Ki Tissa. We can sanctify life not only through death, but through goodness and holy action. May we choose the path of life, of beauty, and of God’s Presence, experiencing the flashes of inner peace and holiness that are truly ours to possess.
Friday, May 4, 2012
We Were There
This week’s Torah portion is Ki Tissa, which means.” when you take.” It begins with the taking of a census, goes on to appoint two people to oversee the work of the Tabernacle and holy vestments, and reiterates that Shabbat observance supersedes work on the tabernacle for God. Later in the portion, while Moses is gone, the people make and worship a golden calf. Moses wins forgiveness for them and has an intimate encounter with God, in which he hears a description of God’s attributes: that God is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger, forgiving, and great in kindness and truth.
I’d like to tell you about something I saw while in Peru. My husband and I traveled to Cuzco, which used to be the capital of the Inca Empire. It is over 11,000 feel above sea level, where the oxygen is pretty thin. It has been called the bellybutton of the world. On one of the hills, overlooking the city of Cuzco, there is a major archeological site, whose name is Sacsayhuamán. This site dates from the middle ages, and in Inca times, probably during the 1400’s & 1500’s it was a religious site associated with the worship of the Condor. The Incas had many gods who represented what they called the 3 worlds: the sky, the earth, and the underworld, the world of death. So this site was part of the worship of the forces of the sky. It is a vast site, a very grand plateau probably the size of several football fields, capable of holding thousands of people, with three levels of undulating walls on one side. The guide for our group told us that in 1536, Francisco Pizzaro and his troops began the siege of Cuzco. It took almost a year. At the end of the siege, the Spanish came up to Sacsayhuamán. There was a religious ritual being enacted there, in which the Inca placed grain on the ground for the condors to descend and eat. The Spanish soldiers massacred every person there: many, many people, and managed to capture a number of condors. They brought the condors down into the city and massacred them too. Thus the Spanish destroyed the religious site, the people, and the Inca religion all in one day. Later they removed stones from the walls there to build churches and cathedrals in Cuzco.
Standing there, I could feel that I was standing on holy ground. It was sanctified by the blood: the deaths of the hundreds and perhaps thousands who were killed there. And I realized that we were the ones who died and we were also the ones doing the killing. God and life are all one. We are one soul, past present, and future. Our Jewish sages have said that to God, there is no past, present, and future. This is also what Einstein believed. Einstein wrote a letter to the family of his friend, Besso, after Besso passed away. He indicated that although Besso had died before him, it was of no consequence, since "...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."
In Ki Tissa we read about the making and worship of the Golden Calf. We may fault the Israelites for their abandonment of the sole worship of one God, but we were there too: not always being able to live up to the level of our knowledge and experience; not always able to live up to our own values and ideals. We are they, but we are also Moses, who knew with a deep, natural knowing, that he must plead for the people, since they were a part of him and he of them. When Moses asked God to give him more information and let him know why Moses found favor “in God’s eyes,” God gave him what we call the 13 attributes: a description of God’s personality: They are: Being, Existence, God; compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in kindness and truth, forgiving willful sins and errors, and who cleanses, but who does not cleanse completely, allowing us to take responsibility for our decisions (the last especially, being an interpretation).
We have made progress since the worship of the Golden Calf. We have made progress since the massacre of the Inca and their sacred birds. But in our world, killing still goes on: in Sudan, in Syria, in the Congo, and elsewhere. Part of us has come so far, but not all of us. The closer we come to being gracious and kind and forgiving to each other; the closer we come to compassion, and truth; to being slower to anger, more patient and more accepting, the closer we will come to what God said to Moses: my Presence shall provide you rest. God’s Presence, that Divine Rest is what we will experience eventually; but also what we can experience occasionally, right now, out of our choosing to live from our knowledge of what we should be striving for. We have been given the goal and the answers. They are right here in Ki Tissa. We can sanctify life not only through death, but through goodness and holy action. May we choose the path of life, of beauty, and of God’s Presence, experiencing the flashes of inner peace and holiness that are truly ours to possess.
I’d like to tell you about something I saw while in Peru. My husband and I traveled to Cuzco, which used to be the capital of the Inca Empire. It is over 11,000 feel above sea level, where the oxygen is pretty thin. It has been called the bellybutton of the world. On one of the hills, overlooking the city of Cuzco, there is a major archeological site, whose name is Sacsayhuamán. This site dates from the middle ages, and in Inca times, probably during the 1400’s & 1500’s it was a religious site associated with the worship of the Condor. The Incas had many gods who represented what they called the 3 worlds: the sky, the earth, and the underworld, the world of death. So this site was part of the worship of the forces of the sky. It is a vast site, a very grand plateau probably the size of several football fields, capable of holding thousands of people, with three levels of undulating walls on one side. The guide for our group told us that in 1536, Francisco Pizzaro and his troops began the siege of Cuzco. It took almost a year. At the end of the siege, the Spanish came up to Sacsayhuamán. There was a religious ritual being enacted there, in which the Inca placed grain on the ground for the condors to descend and eat. The Spanish soldiers massacred every person there: many, many people, and managed to capture a number of condors. They brought the condors down into the city and massacred them too. Thus the Spanish destroyed the religious site, the people, and the Inca religion all in one day. Later they removed stones from the walls there to build churches and cathedrals in Cuzco.
Standing there, I could feel that I was standing on holy ground. It was sanctified by the blood: the deaths of the hundreds and perhaps thousands who were killed there. And I realized that we were the ones who died and we were also the ones doing the killing. God and life are all one. We are one soul, past present, and future. Our Jewish sages have said that to God, there is no past, present, and future. This is also what Einstein believed. Einstein wrote a letter to the family of his friend, Besso, after Besso passed away. He indicated that although Besso had died before him, it was of no consequence, since "...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."
In Ki Tissa we read about the making and worship of the Golden Calf. We may fault the Israelites for their abandonment of the sole worship of one God, but we were there too: not always being able to live up to the level of our knowledge and experience; not always able to live up to our own values and ideals. We are they, but we are also Moses, who knew with a deep, natural knowing, that he must plead for the people, since they were a part of him and he of them. When Moses asked God to give him more information and let him know why Moses found favor “in God’s eyes,” God gave him what we call the 13 attributes: a description of God’s personality: They are: Being, Existence, God; compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in kindness and truth, forgiving willful sins and errors, and who cleanses, but who does not cleanse completely, allowing us to take responsibility for our decisions (the last especially, being an interpretation).
We have made progress since the worship of the Golden Calf. We have made progress since the massacre of the Inca and their sacred birds. But in our world, killing still goes on: in Sudan, in Syria, in the Congo, and elsewhere. Part of us has come so far, but not all of us. The closer we come to being gracious and kind and forgiving to each other; the closer we come to compassion, and truth; to being slower to anger, more patient and more accepting, the closer we will come to what God said to Moses: my Presence shall provide you rest. God’s Presence, that Divine Rest is what we will experience eventually; but also what we can experience occasionally, right now, out of our choosing to live from our knowledge of what we should be striving for. We have been given the goal and the answers. They are right here in Ki Tissa. We can sanctify life not only through death, but through goodness and holy action. May we choose the path of life, of beauty, and of God’s Presence, experiencing the flashes of inner peace and holiness that are truly ours to possess.
Friday, February 25, 2011
God is Arranging It
This week’s Torah portion is Ki Tissa, which means.” when you take.” It begins with the taking of a census, goes on to appoint two people to oversee the work of the Tabernacle and holy vestments, and reiterates that Shabbat observance supersedes work on the tabernacle for God. Later in the portion, while Moses is gone, the people make and worship a golden calf. Moses wins forgiveness for them and has an intimate encounter with God, in which he hears a description of God’s attributes: that God is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger, forgiving, and great in kindness and truth.
Tonight I’d like to address a recurring theme in the Torah. While the people are worshipping the golden calf, it says, “God said to Moses, I have seen this people and behold it is a stiff-necked people, and now desist from me. Let my anger flare up against them and I shall annihilate them and I shall make you a great nation.” This is very similar to a section in the book of Numbers, in which the people have heard the report of the scouts, whose opinion it is that the land cannot be conquered. The people become demoralized and decide to return to Egypt. At that time, the Torah says, “God said to Moses, how long will this people provoke me and how long will they not have faith in me, despite all the signs that I have performed in their midst. I will smite them with the plague and annihilate them and I shall make you a greater and more powerful nation than they.” What are we supposed to think about these two passages? Is God vengeful and punitive or is there something else going on below the surface of the text? My understanding stems from a comment about another incomprehensible passage, the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. In reference to Abraham the sages say that no one is given a test that they cannot pass. These two episodes about Moses are truly just that: they are about Moses and not about the people. In both instances, Moses is given a choice: to continue as the leader of the Jewish people, with all the problems, frustrations, and difficulties that may arise, or to have the problems taken off his hands. In both cases, Moses argues with God and convinces God to save the people. But there is another way to look at this interaction. We say that God is omniscient: all knowing. We also say in Judaism that the past, present, and future are all One, as God and existence are One. So God already knows the outcome of Moses’ choice. God knows what Moses will choose. But – and this is a very important point – God allows Moses free choice. Our free will is never taken away. And by allowing Moses to choose freely, God arranges it so that Moses has to take responsibility for his choice and for signing onto the next leg of the trip, when the going will definitely get tough. Had Moses chosen to kill the Israelites, he would have had to live with the knowledge that he caused all their deaths. So the decision was somewhat of a foregone conclusion. By choosing to intercede for them, it became a win-win situation: Moses passed the tests and he also got to take credit for saving his people. And this helped him to become an even greater leader than he was before, but also helped him spiritually: to grow as a person. What God also caused was that Moses, having agreed to the next leg of the journey, could not complain about how hard the task was, or walk away from it. Taking responsibility means you can’t whine or complain about your choice. This theme of taking responsibility in the Torah, is actually stated for the first time, in B’reisheet, with the story of Adam and Eve. God arranges it so that the fruit was prominently displayed and told the humans not to eat it. But God also planted the suggestion in Eve’s mind, via the serpent, that eating the fruit would be a positive thing, and that it would not cause her death. Eve freely chose to eat the fruit, which made her a conscious human being, knowing right from wrong; but she did not have this knowledge of right and wrong before she ate it, before she chose. God so arranged it that she would grow spiritually and that she would take responsibility for her choice. After the humans became conscious, having exchanged the animal state for the conscious state, they have to work for a living; and fear, the knowledge of the possible future, comes into the world. Having chosen consciousness, they cannot complain or whine about their choice. This is how the world works. We get to choose and then take responsibility for our choices by not complaining about them or blaming anyone for what we have chosen. But we should also be aware of what this portion teaches us: that God is, through suggestion and circumstance, arranging for our spiritual growth. God is not a punitive or angry God. God is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger, forgiving, and great in kindness and truth. God is the One who leads us to tests, in which we can test ourselves against our own sense of rightness and goodness, and morality, which come from our Godly souls and God-given natures. God’s guidance and wisdom arranges win-win situations for us: a path for us along which our blessings lie. Our growth and our blessings are dependent on our willingness to partner with God in the planned forward motion. May we realize that our circumstances are helping us to grow, and choose with faith the positive direction that is being arranged for us.
Tonight I’d like to address a recurring theme in the Torah. While the people are worshipping the golden calf, it says, “God said to Moses, I have seen this people and behold it is a stiff-necked people, and now desist from me. Let my anger flare up against them and I shall annihilate them and I shall make you a great nation.” This is very similar to a section in the book of Numbers, in which the people have heard the report of the scouts, whose opinion it is that the land cannot be conquered. The people become demoralized and decide to return to Egypt. At that time, the Torah says, “God said to Moses, how long will this people provoke me and how long will they not have faith in me, despite all the signs that I have performed in their midst. I will smite them with the plague and annihilate them and I shall make you a greater and more powerful nation than they.” What are we supposed to think about these two passages? Is God vengeful and punitive or is there something else going on below the surface of the text? My understanding stems from a comment about another incomprehensible passage, the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. In reference to Abraham the sages say that no one is given a test that they cannot pass. These two episodes about Moses are truly just that: they are about Moses and not about the people. In both instances, Moses is given a choice: to continue as the leader of the Jewish people, with all the problems, frustrations, and difficulties that may arise, or to have the problems taken off his hands. In both cases, Moses argues with God and convinces God to save the people. But there is another way to look at this interaction. We say that God is omniscient: all knowing. We also say in Judaism that the past, present, and future are all One, as God and existence are One. So God already knows the outcome of Moses’ choice. God knows what Moses will choose. But – and this is a very important point – God allows Moses free choice. Our free will is never taken away. And by allowing Moses to choose freely, God arranges it so that Moses has to take responsibility for his choice and for signing onto the next leg of the trip, when the going will definitely get tough. Had Moses chosen to kill the Israelites, he would have had to live with the knowledge that he caused all their deaths. So the decision was somewhat of a foregone conclusion. By choosing to intercede for them, it became a win-win situation: Moses passed the tests and he also got to take credit for saving his people. And this helped him to become an even greater leader than he was before, but also helped him spiritually: to grow as a person. What God also caused was that Moses, having agreed to the next leg of the journey, could not complain about how hard the task was, or walk away from it. Taking responsibility means you can’t whine or complain about your choice. This theme of taking responsibility in the Torah, is actually stated for the first time, in B’reisheet, with the story of Adam and Eve. God arranges it so that the fruit was prominently displayed and told the humans not to eat it. But God also planted the suggestion in Eve’s mind, via the serpent, that eating the fruit would be a positive thing, and that it would not cause her death. Eve freely chose to eat the fruit, which made her a conscious human being, knowing right from wrong; but she did not have this knowledge of right and wrong before she ate it, before she chose. God so arranged it that she would grow spiritually and that she would take responsibility for her choice. After the humans became conscious, having exchanged the animal state for the conscious state, they have to work for a living; and fear, the knowledge of the possible future, comes into the world. Having chosen consciousness, they cannot complain or whine about their choice. This is how the world works. We get to choose and then take responsibility for our choices by not complaining about them or blaming anyone for what we have chosen. But we should also be aware of what this portion teaches us: that God is, through suggestion and circumstance, arranging for our spiritual growth. God is not a punitive or angry God. God is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger, forgiving, and great in kindness and truth. God is the One who leads us to tests, in which we can test ourselves against our own sense of rightness and goodness, and morality, which come from our Godly souls and God-given natures. God’s guidance and wisdom arranges win-win situations for us: a path for us along which our blessings lie. Our growth and our blessings are dependent on our willingness to partner with God in the planned forward motion. May we realize that our circumstances are helping us to grow, and choose with faith the positive direction that is being arranged for us.
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