Recently I mentioned that we are part of a seemingly endless journey of falling down and getting back up once again. It is this struggle, this “good fight of faith,” that eventually ennobles the heart and establishes character… The hidden blessing of our repeated failure, then, is that we attain genuine humility as we rely on God for the miracle of deliverance. When we draw near to God in confession of our weakness, we may discover that our struggle disguises unacknowledged need within. For example, we might wrestle with sexual lust, but this may come from refusing to trust others or because we are harboring resentment… “Hurt people hurt people,” which means that often our sins come from a place of inner pain of abandonment. When we confess the truth we are enabled to draw close to God – the God of Truth – to discover his mercy. Those things you believe make you unlovable are the very means by which God manifests the glory of His compassion and love for you. “It is not judgment that breaks the heart, but mercy and love.”
This is why during the month of Elul and the High Holidays we recite prayers for forgiveness (i.e., selichot) in the plural, listing all the sins from “A” to “Z” that we (collectively) have committed. We use plural pronouns out of a sense of compassion… We are one body. When some part of the body is sick, the whole body is sick; when one of us sins, he hurts all the flock (1 Cor. 12:26). Therefore the traditional selichot prayer mentions all the possible sins in the order of the Hebrew alphabet: Ashamnu, “we have sinned,” begins with the letter Aleph; Bagadnu, “we have been false,” begins with Bet; Gazalnu, “we have robbed,” begins with Gimmel, and so on… Just as Yeshua taught us, “Avinu She’bashamayim” – our Father, forgive us of our sins, so “all Israel is responsible one for another.” “Compassion” means that others’ sins and failures don’t make them different from us, but rather more like ourselves. It is “feeling with” the heart for the sake of the other in empathy….
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