There’s an old saying: You can’t step in the same river twice. The truth, however, is that you can’t step in the same river once. The river changes the moment you step in.
Changes happens consistently. Yet, there are moments when we really feel it.
I felt it Friday night when my older daughter spoke at synagogue. Even as I have watched her grow, I still pictured her as a little girl sitting in the back with her mom as I spoke.
Then I saw her up there speaking, and the gradual changes she has undergone simply hit home.
That’s part of the paradox of change. It happens gradually, yet we often experience it in a few seminal moments.
Have you seen the film Father of The Bride? Among my favorite scenes is when Steve Martin’s daughter tells him she is getting married.
And then he looks at her, and we see her through his eyes…
She is a seven-year-old girl. She looks up at him. And in a babyish voice tells him she is getting married. It’s surreal.
Yet, we get the feeling that’s how he still sees her. Two decades of change are hitting him all at once.
Change is rarely absolutely good or absolutely bad. It is part of life. The best way to navigate through it is to do what Rabbi Milton Steinberg suggested: “To hold life with open arms.”
Steinberg uttered these words in a sermon he delivered upon leaving the hospital after a massive heart attack. He stepped out of the building and felt awed by the the seemingly ordinary sunlight, breeze and walkers passing by.
The contrast between the inside and outside reminded him that with the right set of the eyes, the ordinary can feel extraordinary.
That’s how to greet change. It is ordinary. Yet, sometimes, when we look at right, it feels extraordinary.
Rabbi Akiba, a great Jewish sage, found the extraordinary in the ordinary. You can read more about him here.
Rabbi Evan Moffic
evan@rabbi.me
Evan Moffic
evan@rabbi.me
Evan Moffic
Congregation Solel
1301 Clavey Road
Highland Park, Illinois 60035, United States
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