Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on March 7, 2015

There is a story I like from the Hasidic tradition about a man who left his home on a quest to find a treasure. He wanted to find the meaning of life; something he had come to believe he couldn't find in the hum-drum routine of his everyday experience. So he started on a journey in search of this treasure.

The first night he slept out under the stars. And before he climbed under his blanket, he took his shoes off and put them in the road pointing in the direction toward which he was heading. Then he went to sleep. That night a prankster turned the man's shoes in the opposite direction, so when the man woke up the next morning and put his shoes on, he started out in the direction from which he had come.

He traveled some distance, and then noticed a house that looked a lot like his house. He went inside the house and was greeted by a family of people who looked remarkably like his family. And, according to the legend, the man then decided to settle down there, and when he did, promptly discovered the treasure for which he had searched.

The moral of the story, of course, is that more often than not, the treasures we are looking for in life and the opportunities we get for a centered and meaningful existence those things are all right here. We don't have to go searching for them in some exotic location, or fool ourselves into thinking that if only this or that circumstance in our life was different, we would finally arrive and, at long last, be content.

The story from the ancient rabbis is wise because it suggests just the opposite. Its simple message is that if you want to find meaning in life, what you need to do is just open your eyes to what you already have and then commit yourself to employ the values you most admire in the places you most frequent and among the people in your ordinary sphere of contacts.

I think Jesus had something similar in mind when he once told his disciples, Dont go rushing around looking for the Kingdom of God; saying Look, here it is, or Lo, there it is. For the Kingdom of God is within you.

Maybe the day on which you are reading this article seems to you like an ordinary day. But if you were to see today as the opportunity to look with freshness on the people in your life, and to live out, in whatever large or small way you can, the values you most admire, then I would suggest to you that today is not ordinary at all. It will be a day on which you experience God.

Here is the original post:

Hoffman: Awaken to the treasures in your midst

Category: Hasidic
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