Have you drank from the fountain of prayer? Pouring forth from your lips or in your heart? Were you praying for someone else’s well being or for your own? In gratitude or in need? In awe or in stillness?
Prayer comes in many forms. As Yitchak pleading on Rivka’s behalf for her to become pregnant, as in our Torah portion. We can pray for someone else’s well being. We can pray that their needs be met. We can help sustain them by letting them know they are in our hearts and through our support.
Prayer can also be on our own behalf. As when Rivka’s pain in pregnancy became unbearable, with two competing twins in her womb. וַתֵּ֖לֶךְ לִדְרֹ֥שׁ אֶת־יְהוָֽה, she went to inquire, to seek out, to beseech G-d for help in her troubles.
We each have access to the place of prayer. Even if we are not religious. Even if “prayer” is too loaded or inaccessible a word. Prayer means accessing the inner places of thanks, awe, need, and stillness. Conversations with G-d are conversations deep within.
What are your prayers?
Commentator Rashi says that Rivka and Yitchak prayed facing each other, each one standing in their respective corners, lifting each other up. How can we hold each other up through our prayers? I leave you with one example. Here is a potent prayer one of our members wrote during this week’s meditation group:
“Dear God,
Please give me strength to endure whatever comes next in this truly
trying time.
Thank you for looking over my children and grandchildren and keeping
them safe.
Thank you for the goodness and beauty I have known in my life.
I need to feel there will be a good end to this pestilence in a time
that I am still on this earth.”
Amen to this prayer. Amen to all of your prayers.
Tihiyu bri’im, stay safe, be well. Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi David
p.s. Two upcoming opportunities for prayer—TONIGHT with our Family & Friends Friday, starting with an all-ages schmooze at 5:45pm (see how our JCOGS kids pray! Hint: adorable and with fervour). And Wednesday’s meditation group, at 10am, with the theme of giving thanks.
