This morning, a miracle happened.
It was small. Barely noticeable. I could have missed it. But it happened.

Over the past year, I’ve made an intentional choice to work on my emunah, my sense of mutual-faithfulness with the Divine.

I struggle with this because my rational brain keeps wanting me to explain myself, to put God in a box. To see the world as a chaotic mechanism that is merely the expression of randomness, choice, and nature.

But as I’ve spent time deepening my understanding of the concept of emunah and practicing it, it is not about rejecting thoughts about how God does or doesn’t function in the world. Rather, emunah is focusing on the mutual desire of God and humans to be connected, to see God as ever present.

In many parts of the Jewish world, we avoid these kinds of conversations, but I’ve come to realize how essential they are. The Netivot Shalom describes emunah as the life-song of the Jew.

And so, in this practice, I remind myself every day that Hashem is beyond explanation, beyond understanding, and beyond even the metaphors that I would use to describe God. And I live in this glorious tension of “ein od milvado,” there is nothing in the universe that is not part of the Divine, and feeling a little ridiculous saying it out loud to myself.

This morning, I was standing at my desk, wrapped in tefillin, ready to pray. My daughter, who had been playing upstairs quietly on her own for some time, all of a sudden shouts down,

"Abba, can you be a lion?”​
​“Sure, let me finish my davening,” I replied, “after that, I’ll come upstairs and be lions with you.”
​“No, I want you to be a lion NOW.”​
​“I’m happy to be a lion with you, but I can’t right now. As soon as I finish davening, I’ll come upstairs and be a lion.”
​“No, I want you to be a lion AND daven.”

This stopped me in my tracks. Why did she want this of me?

And then my mind went to the Shulchan Arukh, the code of Jewish law. You see, the Shulchan Arukh begins with this line, in the very first halakhah:

This is how we're encouraged to wake up by Rabbi Yosef Karo, author of the Shulchan Arukh. To roar ourselves into the day with purpose.

In this moment, through the voice of my toddler daughter, I was reminded to be a lion during my prayers this morning. Later on, we played as bears together, so why did she shout down that I needed to be a lion at that exact moment?

I do not know. I have no idea why she asked this of me.

My emunah tells me that Hashem was speaking through my daughter this morning. Admittedly, I had gotten very distracted and was dragging my heels on starting my prayers, but this shook me out of that.

To be a lion meant to realize that Hashem really is everywhere, paying attention, encouraging, and inviting us into relationship. And we must be open to it.

Where you might see a coincidence, I’m choosing to see a miracle. To hear God’s voice speaking the exact words I needed to hear this morning can really be nothing less.

How many of these moments call out to us every day, but we miss them? How many times does Hashem whisper to us the things we need to hear, but our own thoughts and fears shout them back down?

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