Image credit: Jan-willem
Your annual performance review at work is coming up and you have to prepare a report for your supervisor, outlining your accomplishments of the past year. Or maybe you’re trying to get hired for a new, long-coveted job. Will you list your most impressive accomplishments or will you only mention the areas that your performance was less than perfect? Will you list your primary talents, skills and experience or will you suffice with the mediocre?
Of course you will try to portray yourself in the best way possible, in order to be perceived as the best candidate for a raise or to be hired for the job!
Would it make sense for an accomplished scientist who is trying to establish his credentials and gain acceptance by his peers, to introduce himself as someone who enjoys to play golf on the weekends? Of course not!
Why then does G-d introduce Himself to us as the One who took us out of Egypt?
You’ve surely heard of it before - the Ten Commandments. Well, they’re in this week’s Torah portion and it’s always interesting how G-d uses the experience of the Exodus as a means of introduction. You see, G-d has a pretty significant accomplishment with which to establish His credentials - after all, He created the very world that we inhabit! Wouldn’t that have been a more credible way for Him to introduce Himself?
But there is a very important reason G-d chose this specific reference (and it has nothing to do with Darwinism). The purpose of this event at Mount Sinai, this awesome experience when G-d formally introduced Himself as it were to the Jewish people, was in order for us to enter into a relationship with Him. And what was most relevant to our ancestors? They had just been redeemed from a generations long slavery, they had only a few weeks before been set free by G-d Himself. This was most relevant to them.
G-d was reaching out - and continues to so today - in order to enter into a relationship. He is looking for closeness from us and the language of this relationship is Mitzvot. Each Mitzvah that we do connects us and strengthens our personal relationship.
Let go! Allow yourself to fall in love with G-d all over again - do a Mitzvah today! (Click here for some great Mitzvah ideas that require an investment of one minute or less).