Stop Trying Harder. Start Seeing Differently.

Uch... writing again. I hate it. Because it always needs to come out perfect. Especially when I tell myself, Nah, just write for writing's sake. I know exactly what's hiding behind those words.

Hope.

I always had a problem with that word. I never liked it. I remember reading a piece once about how hope is this double-edged sword. The one that gets you going and then slaps you in the face once you get there.

I think today I don't like it for a different reason.

What is hope?

An upgrade of certainty and a downgrade of faith.

It really holds no water. It's this in-between stage where it either works or it doesn't. It's the waiting game.

I hate waiting games.

Nobody hopes that when they plug in an appliance it'll turn on. You don't hire an electrician in the hopes that, after running all the wires, electricity will flow.

You know it will.

It always does.

Today, Tisha B'Av.

A day I misunderstood for so long.

A day I was angry at for so many years.

A day I hoped would become joyous.

A day my nation has hoped the same for, for millennia.

Today I see it differently.

I no longer hope for Mashiach to come.

I no longer hope for the Beis Hamikdash to be rebuilt.

I no longer hope for God to hear my prayers.

This day has taught me something else.

God didn't burn down the Temple to punish us.

We punished ourselves through the natural laws of cause and effect.

There's no way for godliness to flow if we keep kinking the channel with fighting and intolerance.

But the fighting was never the disease.

It was the symptom.

The channel wasn't blocked by our actions.

It was blocked by the belief that we were splintered in the first place.

This day has taught me the opposite is true as well.

Unkink the channel, and it'll naturally flow.

God's intervention is already embedded in the laws He created.

It's not God waiting to deliver His precious building.

It's Him waiting for us to finally have mercy on ourselves.

Because when we do, it'll happen.

Not out of fear.

Not out of immense prayer.

But out of law.

The laws God set in motion when He created it all

It's not a matter of hope.

It's a matter of law.

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