Musings before the New Year

As I’m sitting here at home on this lovely rainy, September day, sick with who knows what, I’m grateful for this bit of quiet in my recently much noisy life, a life which keeps me from this, what I love most.

It reminds me what this season is all about, of preparing one’s soul for the coming New Year on Rosh Hashanah as we enter the courts of our King and ask Him to pardon us from all sins, iniquities, and unrighteousness from the past year.

How?

I have books to write reviews for, other posts I’ve been itching to write; a wisdom tooth trying to murder me; for shul, I have youth curriculum to write, outlines of High Holy Day service programmes to draft; at work, I have transcripts to complete, a new clerk to hire, clerks resigning; I have a to-do list which keeps growing, growing, growing –– how does any of this help me prepare when I seemingly can’t get my life in order before the New Year?

Because that’s not the purpose of the New Year.

Order and chaos are ever present in our world just as light and darkness. You cannot have one without the other. The chaos allows the existence of order, and order comes from chaos. That is how the world, which was without form, was created.

Rosh Hashanah is traditionally known as the birth of the world, the day of Creation, when Hashem spoke and there was light. How fitting that my arbitrary world should be as chaotic as it is, allowing Hashem the opportunity to create order once again.

It is in the midst of this chaos my world will find peace and order through the continuously working hands of my Creator, Hashem.

That is why I am relishing being home and sick today.

Hashem will only grasp these opportunities of creating order out of chaos if we let Him, if we say, “Yes.” He does not usurp our free will, making His lovingkindness and mercy all the more overwhelming.

Being home reminds me of the quiet, the stillness, the peace which can come in to us in the midst of trials and extraneous forces, for ultimately it is our hearts, our souls which Hashem is seeking.

Thus, this year the question becomes not, “Will my busy schedule go away? Will I be more disciplined, more organised, more deliberate with my intentionality and time? Will I find time to write, to finish that novel? Will X happen because I did Y?”

No.

Rather the question becomes, and should alway be, “Will I let Hashem have my heart?”

Therefore, as we enter this New Year, I pray each of us will find the path of reconciling our hearts to Hashem’s love for us, of seeing our sins and iniquities not as wrongdoings, but as moments of not allowing Hashem to love us, of not trusting in Him.