By: Rolando Kahn
Communications Director
In this week’s Parsha, Abraham pleads with G*d to spare the city Sodom; Sarah, Abraham’s wife, miraculously bears a son, Isaac, and G*d promptly orders Abraham to sacrifice Isaac in His name. Thankfully, this turns out to be a test of Abraham’s faith, as G*d ultimately spares Isaac upon seeing that Abraham is going to follow through on this command.
Meanwhile, Lot hosts a pair of visiting angels in the city of Sodom. During their visit, the citizens of Sodom encircle Lot’s home and demand he bring out the visitors. The angels blind the rioting townspeople and lead Lot, his wife, and daughters safely out of harm’s way, and burn the city to the ground. Sadly, Lot’s wife disobeys the orders of the angels and looks back at the destroyed city and is instantly turned to a pillar of salt.
We see two things in these tales: On one hand, Abraham, who essentially crosses his fingers and continues in hopes that he will not end up having to murder his own son, is rewarded with G*d sending a ram to replace Isaac as an offering. On the other, Lot’s wife, in disobeying the angels’ command to not look back at the destruction she was leaving behind, is turned to salt. The common thread that ties these two stories together is the idea of being given specific instructions to follow. While one holds on to the hope that following directions will resolve in a positive way, the other gives in and chooses to disobey instead of doing as they were told.
Faith, trust, and hope are deceptively complex. It’s easy to tell others to “just have faith!” “trust the process!” and “hope for the best!” but in practice, and under potentially dire circumstances, it’s also easy to let fear and doubt creep in. We get tempted to do away with hope and the trust that everything will work out alright in the end, and sometimes, we get so lost in the negativity and looking back at the loss and destruction that we risk becoming a (figurative) pillar of salt ourselves: Bitter, disappointed, angry, and jaded.
Sometimes life requires us to take a deep breath and dive into situations without knowing the outcome. When faced with this, we should do two things: we must make the conscious choice to trust the process and to keep up the hope that good will come of this and everything will turn out okay. Also, we may not be able to control external forces, but we can control ourselves and our actions and put in the work to help sway the outcome in the direction we want. We can follow directions, know that we are doing our best to control what we can within the situation, trust the process, and hold onto the faith that our actions will lead to a metaphorical ram being placed before us, and we will be spared discomfort. All we need to do is control our controllables and hope for the best, because that is all that is being asked of us.
Shabbat Shalom.
Please email Rolando Kahn at rkahn@jewishcolorado.org with questions or comments.