And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” Then he believed in the Lord. (Gen. 15:5)
What an extraordinary instruction from God, to look toward the heavens and count the stars! And such an extraordinary response from Abraham follows, related in this simple, matter-of-fact statement, “He believed in the Lord.” Look up, count, believe.
When I imagine myself into that moment when God spoke to Abraham, telling him to look toward the heavens and count the innumerable stars, I can almost touch that experience of wordless faith and certainty.
What if the blessings that surround us work the same way? If we only pause to notice, one by one, the innumerable moments and things that have the potential to inspire amazement, awe, wonder, and gratitude, will that fill us with faith and certainty as we take the next step in life?
To the human eye on earth, stars are tiny and distant. But somehow, looking up, whether looking at the vast display so far away or trying to count each one, we are aware that we are part of something so much greater than we. This is something we can’t experience when we spend our days without connecting to the rest of the universe, even disconnected from our own bodies. Extending a hand to another in friendship or to help, a colony of ants working in community, a world reflected in a drop of water, a seedling struggling to burst from the dirt . . . all these things and so much more inspire faith and certainty but only if we notice them.
The basic unit of Jewish prayer is a blessing. “Blessed are You, O Lord our God, Who…” With this formula, we bless different types of foods and beverages. We bless the moon and the sun. We bless an unusual sight, a beautiful sight, religious garments. We begin the Sabbath or a holiday with a blessing, and we end it with one. There is a blessing for surviving illness or danger. There are blessings when we get up, when we lie down and when we wash our hands.
There is an extraordinary blessing to use after we go to the restroom, Asher Yatzar. This prayer thanks God for creating us completely, with all of our body parts in working order. It declares that if any part of our body were to work in the wrong way, life would be more difficult. The blessing ends with a statement that God “heals all flesh and does wonders.”
Think about that for a moment. We don’t even notice when we’re healthy and everything is working well…but when the smallest thing goes wrong in this amazing system that is our body, it can cause a lot of debilitating problems. This blessing calls us to take notice even in the moment we’re not likely to, when everything is fine.
There is a teaching in Jewish blessings. Form and content work together to call us to attention, call us to notice, in the best and worst of places and moments. There is no phenomenon in all of creation that is too small or too great to merit a blessing, no situation without one. The specific content is important for bringing alive the innumerable multitudes of potentialities. The form is important for awakening us. Without us noticing, the potential remains unfulfilled.
Each time we recite a blessing, it fulfills a potential, the potential to believe, to feel faith and certainty as Abram did the night God took him outside to look at the sky. “Look toward the heavens, and count the stars.”
