This has been a long week for my household. We had some bumps and rough patches along the way getting both kids started at school, our puppy neutered, and our AC failing again. So it was a lovely blessing to attend a (virtual) Bar Mitzvah on Friday.
I was heartened to see how the synagogue was holding services much like we do. Everything was on Zoom, the rabbi was at his home, and there were participants from several other households also by Zoom. The young man did a fantastic job chanting the torah. And his talk about his section of scripture was really quite impressive. He deftly wove together things from our current worlds with an arcane rule from ~6,000 years ago, and helped me understand how scripture applies to our current issues in a new and meaningful way.
The rabbi explained that at the end of every Bar Mitzvah service, a portion of scripture is read for us to take out into the world with us. That idea really captured my heart! What if I…what if we… what if all of us took a piece of scripture into the world with us every time we left our house? Lovely.
So, I invite you to think and share. If you were to write a piece of scripture on your door frame, something that you would like to take with you every time you left the house, what would it be?
For me, I think it would be a paraphrase of a section of Genesis 12:2 where God tells Abram, “I will bless you to be a blessing.” If I could remember to take one reminder from God with me every time I left the house, it would be that God has blessed me…and that blessing is intended to be shared with others to bless them, too.
How about you? What’s your scripture to take with you?
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