Shloimie Bochner

We've all seen the scene of a child coming home from school, reaching into their bag and taking out a picture they made for their parent. Every parent will hug and kiss that child and proudly present the picture on the fridge. Why do parents do that? A lot of these pictures are not that great. There's coloring out of the line. The colors might not match. The reason they do it is because it's a representation of the authentic love that the child has for the parent and the effort they put in. But for some reason when it comes to it comes to yum it comes to our relationship with Hashem we think that it might be different. Maybe Hashem's not going to like our picture. Maybe he's not going to like our voda. Maybe he's not going to like accept our tilos. But Hashem is our merciful father Aino. He's way more merciful than any parent could ever be. So what we have to do is just show up authentically as ourselves. Put in the effort and Hashem will take our tilos. He'll take our voda. He'll hug it, he'll kiss it, and he'll proudly present what we have to offer him. But it could be hard to build authenticity. How do we build authenticity? We build it through introspection and reflection, which means taking the time to focus on that relationship. And sometimes during davining, it's hard to focus on that cuz we're so busy focusing on the words and what they mean. So it's important to try and take some time if it's too hard to do it outside of the time of dabbining. We could find some time in dabbing whether it's sitting with our eyes closed or one of the times that the aron is open to just sit and focus on the safer Torah and just reflect on a relationship with Hashem with our relationship with the mitzvah. And we could be sure that Hashem will hug us, he'll kiss us, and he'll bless us with a good year. Wishing everyone an amazing year. [Music]