Fast Is Fake - Bereishis On Fire

Ever ponder the mystery of creation and wonder why Hashem didn't just create the world in a split second? What's the need for the famous drawn out 7-day process? Isn't it just as easy for Hashem to create the world in one second as it is in seven days? Why didn't Hashem just snap his fingers and create the world? Perhaps a reason is to teach the world a fabulous lesson. And that is in life things take time. There's a process. The world is not instantaneous. Babies need to be nurtured to sit and to walk and to talk and to eat by themselves. A child needs time to learn to read, to ride a bike, to drive a car on day one or two or three of creation. If you looked at the world, you would have been you would have seen nothing but like a jungle of light and darkness and you would have been bewildered and thought this is a mess. What is the point of all this? But Hashem says, "Slow down. There's a process and your job is merely to put in the day-to-day progressions and eventually it will lead to a beautiful world." It's much like teaching a child to ride a bike. The first three days he keeps falling off. But this isn't failure. This is teaching his muscles the proper positions and soon enough he's riding down the street. The same is true in every area of life. And Hashem wanted us to know right away from the get-go that things in life take time. Judaism puts great emphasis on the concept of a seder, a process, an order. When we go to Shaw, we dab in from a sitter. In yeshiva, there's first sader and second sader and night seder. Every boy in school learns the shisha sidra Mishna. On pes, we have a pesak seder. The weekly laning is called the sedra. The wedding process is called the seder kadush. Our lives are one big seder. It's one big process with a precise order to it. And it's important for us to remember that because far too often we look at ourselves and compare ourselves to older more experienced people and we expect ourselves to be on that level of amuna or learning or daing or etc. And then when we aren't, we give up. But that's a mistake. And the creation of the world is a reminder that Hashem doesn't expect every 13-year-old boy and every 12year-old girl the minute they become obligated in mitzvah to finish shas and speak not a word of lush and har and do herculean amounts of Hashem knows it's a process and we need to remind ourselves of that from time to time. It's sort of like the same way an airplane doesn't just fall out of the sky like a big rock, but it remains constantly one step ahead of the gravity that's trying to pull it downward by continuously thrusting itself forward until it reaches its destination. So too, on a certain level, we need to deal with our yates, which is our spiritual gravity that wants to weigh us down and make us stagnant and fall out of the ground. And the trick is to keep on moving and growing to develop a jet engine that propels you forward to keep on climbing up the ladder of life. Because in Judaism, you can either go up the mountain or you can go down the mountain. There's no plateau. Listen to this idea. The word in Hebrew for heart is the word le, which is spelled with a lammed and a baze. Now, if you were to write out the word lammed and write out the word baze and then take the hidden letters, you would get the word tid consistently, consistency, because the secret behind a man with an energetic heart on fire, ready to live a life serving Hashem with all his heart is that he is consistent. He recognizes the potential behind each moment. He sees every minute as a step in a bigger process. A process that takes up our whole lives. A process that requires our focus and attention at every moment of every day. A process that we call the importance and power of consistency is actually demonstrated vividly in found throughout originally introduced by a and that is the concept of dictates that when two mitzvah two obligations fall on someone simultaneously the mitzvah that occurs more frequently comes first. For example, when you have a mitzvah to make Shabas and at the same time a mitzvah to light the Kaneka candles and Khan, the custom is to say first because it occurs more frequently. It is now think about that for a second. Does that make any sense? Shouldn't it be the exact opposite? Shouldn't the mitzvah that comes only once a year be so precious to us that we run to do it first? Shouldn't its infrequency make it more special? Why does the mitzvah that comes more frequently take precedence over the mitzvah that comes only once a year? The answer is that the mitzvah doesn't take precedence despite the fact that it comes all the time. It takes precedence precisely because of it. Precisely because the mitzvah is more frequent. Is it more special in the eyes of Hashem? It's the mitzvah that you do week in and week out and month in and month out. It's a mitzvah that requires consistency. It's a mitzvah that requires self-motivation and work and discipline. It's a mitzvah that demands your commitment and your enthusiasm and your attention. It gets no special emotions. There's no musical albums about it. Nobody's circling it on their calendars. It's often overlooked and underappreciated. Hashem says those are the ones that come first. Because on life's latter, those are the ones that make up the most rungs. Those are the ones that sparkle in Hashem's eyes. Those are the ones that separate the men from the boys. Those are the ones that ensure that the process and power of a hashem permeates every moment of every day of our lives. By creating the world in a 7-day process, Hashem is telling us all to trust the power of the process. to never discount the effort that's been invested for lack of perceivable success. Success is a process and our job is to ensure that process keeps on moving. Another great example of this would be teaching a baby how to speak. A baby often looks at you with a completely blank expression on its face as if it has no idea what you're saying. But in actuality, its brain is storing massive amounts of information that will one day be used when it gets older. You may not be able to detect what you're accomplishing when you talk to a baby, but that doesn't take away the fact that you're accomplishing a great deal. The amount of information a baby absorbs in one year is more information than what most adults do in a year. Studies show that babies who grow up in homes with only one parent develop the ability to talk and comprehend words significantly later than babies with two parents in the home. The reason because the baby with only one parent in the home has 50% fewer words being spoken around them and therefore has considerably less interaction with language. And that's the point. Growth in life is almost never visible. It takes place slowly. The secret is to keep on working. That's the whole message of boratious. Because if you wait to see results before you believe in the value of your effort, you'll give up before anything meaningful ever happens. But if you trust the process, if you honor each small act, each word of Tyra, each attempt to overcome your each small spark of even when it feels dry, you're not in the mood, then you are building something enormous. You are teaching your soul how to speak. And one day, just like that baby, you will open up your mouth or your heart and say something divine. Something divine will come out of your mouth. That's the power of a hashem. That's the power of a process. That's the power of a y who keeps on going, of a y who keeps climbing and keeps striving and keeps trusting. Because Hashem created the world in seven days to show you greatness doesn't come in an instant. It comes one day at a time.