Where Is God? Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

[Music] there once was a rabbi who found a young boy in the street crying his eyes out what's the matter little one said the rabbi between his sobs the little boy whimpered we were playing hide and seek and I was the one who was supposed to go and hide well I went and hid but nobody came to look for me the rabbi smiled at the little boy and said don't feel so bad you're in pretty good company God feels a lot like you not many people are coming to look for him this world is like a cosmic game of hide and seek we're invited to this world this invitation is called life the invitation itself is a challenge who brought us here who sustains us here what are we doing here to make these challenges more meaningful and rewarding the game of life has distractions and false leads that can take us far away from our true purpose but our host has not left us without help in navigating this Ultimate hideand-seek Experience he's provided a clear map guaranteed to lead us to him and to the purpose of our existence here the map is called the Torah when we keep the Torah we see God more and more clearly in our lives if we don't keep it then God becomes more and more difficult to see it says in the Torah I will surely have hidden my face in the Hebrew the way you say to surely do something the emphatic voice is to double the verb in other words the literal translation of I will surely have hidden my face is hide I will have hidden my face the word hide is used twice there are two kinds of hiding a hiding where you know that someone's there you just can't see them and a double hiding where you don't even know that they're there at all in that kind of hiding the hiddenness itself is hidden when we're aware that God is hidden from us he's not really concealed because we realize that our hiding from him has been reciprocated by him hiding from us and so we return to him and we try and reestablish our relationship with him but when the hiding itself is hidden when we see a world without God God forbid then nothing awakens us to return to him we think to ourselves there's no judge and because there's no judge there's no justice there is only one light in the world that lets you see through the darkness in which we live the spiritual Masters teach us that every time you do a mitzah you light a candle in this dark world and every time you learn Torah you flood the world with light