Fourth Night Meditation

In the midst of the festival hustle, not to mention the regular duties and obligations of my life, I long for peace. I look for the deeper emotional connection that resides outside the realms of the practical, the factual. I strive to let go of self and worrisome problems, and dwell in that place of quiet meditation that allows me to drink deeply of the spiritual truths of the One who controls all things. For it is only when I am quiet and still that can I breathe in the peace that passes all understanding. I selfishly desire this for myself, for it is true that we can only give what we indeed possess.

A Fourth Night Meditation

Thus said God the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what it brings forth, who gave breath to the people upon it and life to those who walk thereon: I the Lord, in My grace, have summoned you, and I have taken you by the hand I created you, and appointed you a covenant people, a light to the nations -- opening eyes deprived of light, rescuing prisoners from confinement, from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create woe -- I the Lord do all these things.

I will lead the blind by a road they did not know, and I will make them walk by paths they never knew. I will turn darkness before them into light, rough places into level ground. These are promises -- I will keep them without fail.

Isaiah 42:5-7; 45:7; 42:16
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by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld