In EmunahSpeak:
Talk To Hashem First, we spoke about not first whipping out
your cell phone to locate the world’s foremost specialist in whatever branch of
medicine in which you seek assistance before having a sit down with Hashem as
to your problem:
And when you talk to Hashem first
you’re not throwing Him a crumb as an afterthought after having milked out of
Teva whatever you thought it had to offer.
You are going straight to the heart of the matter and with your
priorities in place you can then play Teva like a violin while Hashem does the
heavy lifting.
Excellent
advice to be sure but your one on ones with Hashem shouldn’t be relegated to
serve as a prelude to life’s trying moments, as if to say that you have the tog
taiglach of your existence in this world well in hand.
You
don’t, and as such we shouldn’t be asking only for big things because it
betrays a lack of an appreciation in hashgacha pratis. What one should be doing is talking to Hashem
on a constant basis, for as we learn in Bilvavi
Mishkan Evneh, the address for everything is simply Hashem, there’s nowhere
else to turn. And that’s because that
anything one seeks, be it material or spiritual, must be attained through
tefillah. Without tefillah, have a nice
day, because nothing can be achieved, including the tefillah itself. One
must pray to Hashem before tefillah that he should be able to pray properly, as
in having peace of mind without outer distractions from people around you, or
internal distractions such as troubled thoughts and worries.
Moreover,
the concept that nothing can be achieved without tefillah is an inyan of Emunah
and that Emunah itself requires tefillah.
And
we are further told that we must attain the habit of uttering words of tefillah
(a.k.a talking) directly to Hashem throughout the day, in the second person
because when you speak to Hashem you are speaking to Him as one friend speaks to another.
Bilvavi
Mishkan also reminds us that we should pray before we do anything throughout
the day. This means that as soon as our
daily tefillah ends in the morning and our active day begins as we turn to
other endeavors, our communication level with Hashem shifts into high gear
because we must pray for each act that we plan to do and most of us have a lot
of plans.
And
exactly how does one define constant?
Talk
to Hashem first and basically don’t stop.
But
for those of us, however, who are somewhat more tethered to the natural order
of things and have need to take an occasional breath, we are told that one who lives in truth will
not let ten minutes pass without some kind of tefillah passing his lips or
reverberating in his heart.
