“Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25). Such is the “exile of hope” we suffer in this world… Torah begins: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was “tohu va’vohu v’choshekh” (תהוּ וָבהוּ וְחשֶׁךְ) – confusion and emptiness and darkness – which the sages interpret to mean that when we truly understand that God created the heavens and the earth, we will realize our earthy desires to be barren, empty and unreal.
In their despair, Plato and the early Greek philosophers sought “timeless universals” which they believed disclosed the reality of an “upper world,” a heavenly realm of unchanging goodness, beauty, and truth. The world we experience with our senses is a shadowy place of change and decay; but the real world, discerned by clear thinking, is a place of permanence, goodness and illumination. Likewise the righteous soul trusts that despite this fleeting world (העולם הנעלם) that turns to dust, there is an eternal realm (התחום הנצחי), a place of abiding love, and a heavenly home.
The land of promise is a “foreign land” to this world, but the heart of faith beholds “the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10). “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). Therefore “we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient (πρόσκαιρος), but the things that are unseen are eternal. For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 4:18-5:1). In this world we suffer exile, groaning to be with our Savior, the Source of all blessing: “I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you” (Psalm 16:2).
Hebrew Lesson:
