God's love

This week, I traveled from Sanibel, FL to Los Angeles, CA. Traversing the country by bike, plane, and car, and I discovered there are many ways to go on a journey. I didn’t necessarily appreciate the mind-numbing monotony of endless desert or field. Nor did I enjoy sitting in a car seat for upwards of 13 hours a day. Nor did I desire to sit still for hours on end. However, there were aspects of this trip that I found breathtakingly phenomenal. I came to understand that part of that adventure is the process itself, not the final destination. The wide open sky, with no buildings disturbing the expanse. The fresh-smell of a pine forest, not encroached upon by human spoil. The simple beauty of a field populated by yellow flowers, not marred by anything else.

Now, sitting in my new apartment, smelling the challah baking in the oven, sweaty from unpacking all of my clothes into my closet, I feel a sense of accomplishment only matched by other move-in adventures. This shabbat, I recognize that God chose us, the Jewish people; gave us the Torah; the journey through the desert for a reason. Not being omniscient, the particular reason is beyond me. However, I have a few thoughts.

This week’s parsha, V’etchanan, ends with an explanation of why God chose the Jewish people. in D'varim (Deuteronomy 7:7-11), God tells Moses, to tell the people, that God didn’t chose them because they are large (we were the smallest at the time), but because God loved us and promised to continue to love us. The logic doesn’t exactly follow, but the conclusion is that God loved, and still loves us, despite all the hardships we had to overcome to get to the Acacia trees in Moab, right outside of the land of Israel. The journey is a necessity, in order to enjoy the fruits of the labor. God’s love is what will get us there.

Not only that, but God tells us what to do with God’s commands. This parsha includes the Ten Commandments, reiterated, so we know exactly how to follow God’s commands, to respect God’s love for us. Right before those Commandments, we get the Shema and V’ahavtah, the watchword of our faith that tells us what it means to be Jewish (have one God) and then how to remind yourself of that daily, how to love God.

In short, the parsha is about God’s love for us and how we should love God in return. The journey through the desert, and the initial reaction to the land of Israel demonstrate that the people didn’t always feel God’s love, nor did they appreciate God attempting to lead them. But eventually, eventually, they accepted and began to understand the benefits of God’s love.

So too, was my journey across the country trying at times. So too is Los Angeles not what I was expecting or am necessarily accustomed. I have much to learn. I have much to get used to. But, I will remind myself of God’s love and how I can maintain my covenant with God, and hopefully discover that the journey gets a little easier along the way.