You Open Your Hand

“You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” A Promise and a Question “You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” We say this verse twice every day, in the prayer made of Psalm 145. We say it with special focus. It holds a great promise. Hashem opens His hand and satisfies every living thing. He gives each and every one of us what we desire. If so, my brother, an honest question comes up by itself. We pray. We ask. We want. So why isn’t everything filled? Where is the “You open Your hand”? Where is the “satisfy”? Sit with this question for a moment. Don’t rush to push it away. Desire or Daydream? A man once asked his friend, “What do you want?” His friend said, “Three million dollars.” “And how much do you have right now?” “A thousand.” Yes, very nice. But this man does not want three million dollars. He imagines three million dollars. There is a huge difference between the two. The word “desire” means something special in the holy language of the Torah and in Hasidic teaching. It is not a passing thought that pops into your head when you are in trouble. It is not a pleasant daydream when you have nothing to do. A real desire is a state of being inside a person. It is something you can hold within yourself. It has touched the very core of your inner powers and has become part of your inner reality. And whatever a person cannot hold, because he has no vessel to receive it, he does not truly want. He only imagines it. We find this idea in the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought. It teaches that imagination is a power that has fallen away from the truth. It paints pictures that have nothing real in them. The imagination leads you astray. You believe yourself when you say you want something. But deep in the heart, there is no root there. The Vessel Comes First There is a basic rule in Hasidic teaching: blessing can rest only inside a vessel that can hold it. Without a vessel, the blessing is not taken in. It is not felt. For the one receiving it, it is as if it does not exist. So what is the vessel? It is the inner desire itself. But it is a desire that has become real inside you. You can feel it with all your inner powers. You have a true connection to it. Your body, your heart and your mind are all lined up toward it. That is why the verse says “satisfies the desire of every living thing.” It does not say “satisfies the daydream of every living thing.” Hashem fills a desire, a desire that is alive, that breathes and lives deep inside a person. He does not fill an outer thought that has no hold on what is real inside you. Building the Vessel So what do we do? Should the young married man in our story give up his big dreams? Not at all! But there is work in front of him. Real inner work. A man who has a thousand dollars and wants to reach a million should start by learning what it means to hold ten thousand. Then a hundred thousand. He should not jump in his imagination from one end to the other. Step by step, he should build inside himself a vessel that can hold the next blessing. He keeps building until the desire is felt and true, until his body can carry it and his heart can hold it. This is the true work of prayer. It is not standing before Hashem and handing Him a wish list. It is building the vessel, through prayer, through thought and through action, until your request turns from a daydream into a desire. Until it has real vitality. Until it is yours, in your very core and in all your inner powers. For our Sages teach: an awakening from below brings an awakening from above. Our own awakening down here is the key that opens the blessing from above. But that awakening from below has to be real. It has to be alive. Closing Let us go back to the verse: “You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” Hashem is not stingy. His hand is always open. The question is: is our desire alive? Is it real inside us, or is it only a thought we had for a passing moment? The promise of the verse stands forever: “the desire of every living thing.” It is for everyone whose desire is alive within him. Our work, in prayer, in life, every single day, is to turn the wishes of our heart into true, inner desires. To build the vessel. And then the opening from above will come by itself.