You Are the Miracle

Opening Picture this for a moment. You are standing at the edge of the sea. The waves are high. The Egyptian army is behind you. In front of you there is only a wall of water. You pray. You hope. You wait for something to happen from Above. But Nachshon son of Amminadab, leader of the tribe of Judah, did not wait. How many times in life do we stand in front of our own “sea”? It might be about making a living, raising our children, or peace at home. And we feel like we are watching our own lives from the side. We wait for something to “budge in Heaven.” We pray as if we were helpless, as if everything depended on help coming from somewhere else. There is truth in this. But there is also a mistake in it. And that is what we need to understand. First Movement: What Are You, Really? Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, writes in chapter 2: “The souls of the Jewish people are truly a piece of Hashem above.” “Truly.” It is not a figure of speech and not a picture. It means truly, really truly. Your soul is not something Hashem created and sent down to earth. It is a part of Him. The body is like an image of this, the divine image in which we were made. It is not a break from Him. It is a continuation of Him. The holy Zohar, the great book of Jewish mysticism, writes: “A person’s soul is a spark of Hashem,” a spark of the divine itself. Now think. If this is so, what does it mean to wait for Hashem to “step in”? He is already here. He is inside you. He breathes through you. The problem is not that Hashem is absent. The problem is that we have forgotten He is inside us. Second Movement: You Decree, He Fulfills Our Sages said: “The righteous person decrees, and Hashem fulfills.” At first this sounds like a division of roles: the righteous person asks, and Hashem agrees. But in light of what we have said, the meaning goes much deeper. The righteous person decrees. He does not ask, he does not plead, he does not wait. He acts, he speaks, he moves. And Hashem fulfills. He carries it forward, confirms it and makes it real. This is not a request followed by a result. It is cause and effect. The decree of the righteous person is itself the vessel through which Hashem acts in the world. You speak, and Hashem echoes. You move, and Hashem clears the way. Because He is inside you, and He wants you to start acting as if you know it. There is more. The holy Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, revealed that this power to decree does not belong only to a rare chosen few. Every Jew has this power, through his soul, through the “truly a piece of Hashem above” that is within him. As the Midrash on the Song of Songs says: “Open for Me an opening as small as the point of a needle, and I will open for you an opening as wide as a great hall.” Your small action, the first stirring that comes from below, is what opens the great gates. Hashem is not waiting for you to finish. He is waiting for you to begin. Closing: The Nachshon Inside You Back to the sea. Nachshon did not stand on the shore and make calculations. He jumped. And the sea split, but only after the water had reached his neck. The miracle did not come before the jump. The miracle was the jump. My brother, there is no “sea” in your life that will split by itself. But you have a soul that is part of the One who split the sea. And Hashem wants to act in the world through you. He wants to act through your words, through your deeds, and through the step you are afraid to take. Stop waiting for a miracle. You are the miracle. Now just move.