Hope in Hashem: I Will Yet Thank Him

As the Book of Psalms says: “Why are you so bowed down, my soul? Why do you moan within me? Hope in Hashem, for I will yet thank Him. He is the salvation of my face, and my Hashem.” Opening There are hours when the soul sinks. Nothing terrible has happened, and nothing has fallen apart. It sinks because the mind has started to spin. Maybe it is the worry about making a living. Maybe it is a hardship that won’t go away, or something that hasn’t worked out for two years now. Then the thoughts begin: “Why me? What if it gets worse? Whose fault is all this?” When the mind spins like this, the problem grows. Reality has not changed. The way you look at it is making it bigger. The Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, calls this “the bowing down of the soul.” The soul collapses under its own weight. It grows small in its own eyes, and from there it slides into heavy sadness. And heavy sadness, as is known, is “a state of exile for the divine soul.” The Question The psalmist speaks from this very same place: “Why are you so bowed down, my soul, and why do you moan within me?” The soul is bent low. It moans, and it cannot be still. Then he gives advice: “Hope in Hashem, for I will yet thank Him.” Hope. Wait with longing. But a question comes up right away: how? When the pain is so real and the darkness so present, how do you “hope”? Isn’t that just running away from reality? The Secret in the Word “Yet” Everything depends on one word: yet. The verse does not say “for afterward I will thank Him.” It does not say “for someday I will thank Him.” It says “for I will yet thank Him.” In Hebrew this word is not only a marker of future time. It has presence in it. It means: “Already now, I am living inside what is yet to be.” This is the difference between waiting passively and working actively. “Hope in Hashem” does not mean: sit back and wait. It means: step into the “yet.” Move your awareness away from the painful reality of “now” and toward the bright possibility of “yet.” By doing this, you draw the salvation into the present. Two Modes of the Soul When a person pours his thoughts into the problem, asking “Why me? Whose fault is it? What will be?”, he is running the animal soul at its very lowest. The animal soul is the self-centered side of us. Here it sinks into self-pity and plays the victim. And the animal soul, as we know, keeps “demanding” more and more attention. Every bit of attention it gets makes it grow. But the moment a person asks, “What is possible? What could yet be?”, he is running the divine soul. The divine soul is “the builder.” It has the power to create a new reality through thought and reflection. This is the meaning of the phrase “the mind rules over the heart.” It does not mean crushing your feelings. It means using the power of thought to steer your feelings somewhere else, toward the “yet.” Going Deeper: Think Good, and It Will Be Good There is a well-known teaching handed down in the name of the great Hasidic masters: “Think good, and it will be good.” Some people take this as simple optimism, an instruction to smile and think positive. But it goes deeper than that. “Hope in Hashem” is a practical instruction. Use the power Hashem gave you, the power of thought and reflection. Do not use it to run away from reality. Use it to change reality. When a person lives inside the “yet,” he truly draws the coming good toward himself. This is not sentimental faith. It is an awakening from below that draws down an awakening from above. It is the movement from below that opens the channel from above. In the same way, Nachshon son of Aminadav, prince of the tribe of Judah, did not stand on the shore of the sea “waiting for a miracle.” He walked into the water. Walking in was the miracle. Closing: The Salvation of His Face Notice how the verse ends: “the salvation of His face.” His face, not His hand or His strength. His face. True salvation is not only that the problem gets solved from the outside. It is that the face changes, the very way we look. The moment a person “lives in the yet,” he has already begun to taste the salvation. Reality has not changed. He has changed. And “I will yet thank Him” means that thanking Hashem is not saved for after everything works out. Thanking begins now, from living inside the “yet.” And that thanking hurries the salvation along, until it comes in full.