Transcript
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And so in Jewish tradition, we have
three prayers a day, the morning, the
afternoon, and the evening. And each one
is represented by one of the patriarchs.
And I just want to take a moment and
just delve a little bit deeper into that
because that was the legacy the
patriarchs left us. They didn't leave us
any laws. They didn't leave us many
rituals. They represented prayer. They
taught us prayer before the law, before
rules, before any religion of any kind.
The patriarchs were telling us that the
foundation that everything else is going
to be built upon, it's going to be built
upon prayer. And we've taught this
hundreds of times, but it's just another
angle of why the temple is called not a
house of Torah, but a house of prayer
for all nations. Because it's the root
of everything. It's the core that has
the ability of bringing everyone
together. And so Abraham, he initiated
the quest for God. He was the first, the
morning, the most creative spiritual
personality, the father of everyone who
sets out on a journey of our spirit, an
unknown destination. Abraham was the
initiator. He was the one that sought
after God. Isaac goes out into the field
and Isaac's prayer is literally
described as a which literally means a
conversation, a dialogue. And so there
are two parties to a dialogue. One
speaks, one listens, and having
listened, one responds. And this back
and forth. Isaac represents the
religious experience as a conversation
between the word of Hashem and the word
of humankind. Isaac was born into a
relationship with God. He didn't need to
seek after the truth. He was born into
it. He was Abraham's son. But he took
his faith and he made it into a dance, a
give and take, a conversation. Isaac
didn't make anything new. He's not the
morning. He's the afternoon. He makes
Abraham's initiation deeper, just more
disciplined daily. Just as he redug
Abraham's original wills, his prayer was
taking his relationship with Hashem to
the next level, making his life a
conversation with God. And that was
Isaac's legacy that he left us. Jacob is
totally different. He doesn't initiate
anything in prayer. His thoughts,
they're somewhere else. They're on Asav
who he's escaping from. They're on
Lavan, Laban, where he's running to. And
in that troubled mind comes a vision of
God and angels in a stairway connecting
heaven and earth. He didn't prepare for
it. It was unexpected.
He just hits a certain place and it
happens to him. That's literally what
Jacob says. He wasn't prepared for what
he had experienced. Genesis 28:16 says,
"When Jacob awoke from his sleep and
said, "Well, surely the Lord is in this
place and I did not know it." He wasn't
aware. It just hit him. This was a
meeting that was brought about by God,
not men. And this is why Jacob's prayer
is marv. It's the nighttime prayer. The
nighttime prayer, it's not an
obligation. It's not obligatory. You
can't make an encounter with an
obligation. None of us knows when the
presence of God is going to suddenly
intrude into our lives. Jacob was
showing us that there's an element to
religious life that's beyond conscious
control. It comes out of nowhere when
you least expect it. If Abraham
represents our journey towards God and
Isaac is our dialogue with God, Jacob
represents God's encounter with us. It's
unplanned. It's unscheduled, unexpected.
The vision, the voice, the call we can
never know in advance,
but it changes our lives. And of course,
it happens at nighttime for Jacob. It
happens at night time for all of us when
everything is dark. That is the gift
given to the children of Israel. At
nighttime, we're invited to open our
hearts, to open our lives to an
encounter. We can't prepare for it, but
it has the power to change our lives.
[Music]
