Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you. [Deuteronomy 31:8 (NLT)]
With its declaration of one all-powerful infinite God, Jewish tradition holds that the Shema’s first verse “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one,” is the most important and, as such, demands greater concentration so the eyes are closed or covered by the right hand during its recitation. The Talmud traces this practice back to Rabbi Judah the Prince (135 – 219 AD) who often interrupted his lectures to recite the Shema. Whenever he did so, the rabbi placed his hands over his eyes as a way of disconnecting from his surroundings.
Reading about covering eyes during Shema caused me to ponder why we usually close our eyes during prayer. Closing our eyes certainly helps us avoid distractions but I came across additional Talmudic explanations for this practice. Rather than closing his eyes as a way to shut out the world, 13th century Rabbi Yonah Gerondi rotated his eyes so he could see God in all directions. He only covered them during the Shema to ensure his spiritual privacy while rolling his eyes. In his explanation for shutting the eyes, 17th century Rabbi Ezekiel Landau said, “it would be difficult to express complete faith in God while looking at the pain in the world around us.” Indeed, sometimes it is difficult to express our faith in the midst of the suffering and ugliness in the world.
Another Talmudic explanation for closing the eyes while reciting the Shema is that its meaning goes beyond stating there is only one God—the Shema also means there is no existence outside of God. By closing one’s eyes during its recitation, a person briefly steps outside the physical reality of the world and into a reality centered only on God.
While there are times I pray with my eyes open (when walking in the morning, inspired by God’s glorious creation, witnessing something troubling, or saying a quick prayer for a stranger or passerby), I usually pray with my eyes closed (as I suspect most people do). Why? After all, when Jesus taught us to pray, He didn’t tell us to close our eyes before starting!
Perhaps we close our eyes during prayer for all of the reasons found in the Talmud—to avoid distraction, to see past the pain, to see God in all directions, and to acknowledge that nothing exists outside of Him. It could simply be that when we close our eyes all we can see is darkness. Nevertheless, even though we can’t see our surroundings, we know they haven’t disappeared because we also know that not seeing something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Our closed eyes remind us that even though we can’t see God, His purpose, or His plan, He’s right beside us. Perhaps, we close our eyes because, as follower of Christ, we live by faith, not sight!
In its entirety, the Shema consists of three sections: Deuteronomy 6:4–9, Deuteronomy 11:13–2, and Numbers 15:37–41. The second paragraph of the Shema repeats the first one’s commands regarding the binding of God’s words to hands and forehead, writing them on the doorways and gates, teaching them to the children, and talking about them throughout the day. The primary theme of this paragraph, however, is that the promised land and the people’s enjoyment of it depended on their faithfulness to God. As long as they loved God and served Him with heart and soul, the people and land would be blessed but, if they turned aside to serve other gods, God’s wrath would result and things would not go well for the people or their land. In this warning, that is repeated again and again throughout the Old Testament, we see the fundamental Jewish belief that reward and punishment are based on the fulfillment of God’s commandments.
If I read a novel simply by searching through it for a few choice sentences, I’d miss the whole plot! I could quote Scarlett’s last words “After all, tomorrow is another day,” but I wouldn’t know why she said it nor would I know why Rhett said he didn’t give a damn! If I picked out just a few sentences in A Tale of Two Cities, I’d never know why Dickens said, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” or even the names of the two cities! While I might be able to quote Santiago’s belief that, ”A man can be destroyed but not defeated,” I wouldn’t know if that proved true without finishing The Old Man and the Sea. Reading only bits and pieces, I’d never know that it was an escaped convict, not Miss Havisham, who was Pip’s benefactor in Great Expectations, that Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester had a lunatic wife in the attic, or the identity of the killer in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.
At sunset yesterday, the Jewish feast of Shavuot began. Originally known as Festival of Harvest or First Fruits, Shavuot is the second of the three pilgrimage festivals given to the Israelites. The first was that of Unleavened Bread (Passover) and the third was the Final Harvest or Ingathering (Sukkot or Tabernacles). Originally, all three festivals were tied to the harvest with Passover at the beginning of the barley harvest, Shavuot seven weeks later at the start of the wheat harvest, and Sukkot at the last harvest of the season. For a nation who’d left Canaan because of famine, spent four hundred years in a foreign land (much of it as slaves) and then another forty years as nomads, the promise of becoming a people with land of their own, who could plant and harvest for themselves, must have been almost inconceivable.
In Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding Dinner, after the initial guests refused to come, the king’s servants invited everyone they could find. Since it was a royal wedding, you’d expect the new guests to be dignitaries but everyone was to be called—regardless of social standing, race, nationality, wealth, or even moral character.
In explaining the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus told a parable about a king who prepared a wedding feast for his son. Weddings are notable events but this was a royal wedding of great significance! Perhaps the most famous royal wedding was that of Princess Diana and Prince Charles in 1981. Broadcast all over the world, the wedding was viewed by 750 million people and 3,500 people attended the royal nuptials. In spite of the honor it was to receive an invitation from the Queen, not everyone who got one attended the festivities. The Presidents of the Republic of Ireland and Greece along with King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain spurned the invitation for political reasons.
Devotions of the Heart 