Have you ever woken up on the late side, become overwhelmed with frivolous matters and just felt utterly disconnected with God? Life in the 21st century with all of it’s incredible technology and advanced communication has caused our spiritual awareness to become increasingly dull. But the truth is that God is constantly recreating the world and every moment is another potential opportunity to “take your blinders off.” But how? Reb Nosson had the following advise to share with his son Reb Yitzchok.
May God help you understand the hints contained in everything in the world; may He show you how, through them, you can draw closer to Him each and every day: depending on the individual, the place and the time. Everything that happens in the world, be it life or death, rising prices or falling prices, poverty or wealth, or any other occurrence or incident that takes place in the world ~ globally, nationally, locally, or to an individual ~ all happens only in order to remind us of God specifically through this. He, in His wisdom and mercy, is the Cause of everything. Everything that happens is for our eternal good, in order that through every thing we should come to know Him, each and every day. For God is indeed working His will at this very moment and will continue to work His will. (Letter # 47; see “Healing Leaves.”)
Reb Nosson’s advice is that we don’t have to take ourselves out of our situations and we don’t have to run away in order to find God. But we do need to open up our own eyes to everything we are going through and everything that is going on around us and connect these experience back to their Source. We need to reflect on them and see if we can discover the hints that God is whispering to us. Whether we merit to hear them or not, we should at least remind ourselves and become aware that there is a Cause for everything and do what we can to live and communicate with our Creator. Then we will merit to live a meaningful and purposeful life.
