The Shofar’s Message of Hope - R. Tzvi Sytner - TorahAnytime.com

So, in about a week, we're going to blow the shofar. Now, besides the shofar being like a wake-up call for all of us, there's another very powerful, hopeful message in the shofar. If you listen to the sounds, what do we say? A tekiah, shevarim, teruah, tekiah, which means one long, strong, consistent blast, followed by three short blasts, then nine really short blasts, and then one very long one again. And I feel like this progression of sounds is actually the story of our lives. Like, how many times in life did we start off something doing it so consistently, so strong, we were going great. Then we start to trip up a little bit, get a little less consistent, messed up a bit, and then even more, nine times it just kept happening again and again and again. But then, after all of that kind of falling and messing up, we eventually got back on our feet, we got consistent again, we got strong once again, and we pushed forward with one long, strong blast, we kept going. And we do this all the time over the course of our lives, in our marriages, our parenting, our personal character traits, our anger, our patience, our davening, our learning. There are times when we're super consistent, and then we start to trip up, but we always got back on our feet again, we always pushed forward. That's the story of the shofar, it's really the story of our lives. And so, here we are now, we're trying to do teshuvah, we want to grow, we want to improve. And part of us might be thinking, like, I don't know, do I have it in me? Can I do this? Can I really pick this up? I'm like, I just keep tripping up. It's true, you might you might be tripping up. And you've done it many times in the past, but every single time you got back on your feet, you pushed forward, you were consistent once again, and you can do it now. That's the message we have to be telling ourselves at this point, get back on your feet, push forward, end strong, start strong, cuz you've done it in the past, and you can do it again.