Growing Each Day
By Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski
"If you seize too much, you are left with nothing. If you take less, you may retain it.”
— Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 4b
Sometimes our appetites are insatiable; more accurately, we act as though they were insatiable. The Midrash states that a person may never be satisfied. "If he has one hundred, he wants two hundred. If he gets two hundred, he wants four hundred" (Koheles Rabbah 1:34). How often have we seen people whose insatiable desire for material wealth resulted in their losing everything, much like the gambler whose constant urge to win results in total loss.
People's bodies are finite, and their actual needs are limited. The endless pursuit for more wealth than they can use is nothing more than an elusive belief that they can live forever (Psalms 49:10).
The one part of us that is indeed infinite is our neshamah (soul), which, being of Divine origin, can crave and achieve infinity and eternity, and such craving is characteristic of spiritual growth.
How strange that we tend to give the body much more than it can possibly handle, and the neshamah so much less than it needs!
TODAY I SHALL ...
... try to avoid striving for material excesses, and increase my efforts to provide my soul with spiritual nourishment."
Gratefully taken from
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/
Each Sabbath, we stop pursuit for material gains and focus on the growth of our spirits; our knowledge of G*D; and G*D's will for us. Each week, this day of rest is a means to escape the rat race and rejoice in the blessing I have; to slow down and be grateful; to focus on what is real in this life;and to feed our souls. It is a day that I have come to appreciate more and more...
Shabbat Shalom!
(Peace on the Sabbath!)