It’s a beautiful spring morning. Our home in Maine is by the sea and in view of the working waterfront. Watching the lobsterman (now only one since the winter storm last year wiped out the majority of the lobster pound wharfs) loading his traps brought a poignant sadness to the beauty. The 91-year-old owner of the property, despite the devastation of the business, still comes down every day to check the building.

Our neighbor across the street has been dying of cancer for the last two years. He spent the winter at a nearby hospice not expecting to make it to spring. He had even rehomed the love of his life “Puppy” to another neighbor. Yet here he is, all 100 pounds of him, actively working on project after project.

What a world of both/ands – the incongruous, cognitively dissonant, challenging space we occupy in this world of such created beauty filled with tsuris (worry/hardship), a world so full of choices, to live well, meaningfully, or not.

The nonagenarian owner of the lobster pound has spent his life here. The facility had survived fire and flood over his lifetime. The January 2024 storm, however, completely wiped out his wharfs. Despite attempts to rebuild the wharfs, nothing succeeded. Yet here he is, every day, with a few loyal former lobstermen, figuring out next steps. The neighbor knowing death may arrive any day is still motivated to live, to create.

Whether they are aware of it or not, that life force, that desire for being productive, contributory, that seeking of positivity, goodness, happiness, fulfillment, survival, is from God. For folks up here the breathtaking beauty becomes second nature. Perhaps the daily trips to sea cause the lobstermen to lose their fascination over its magnificence.

Yet when we remember that these gifts are just that – gifts/blessings-we may begin to cherish them, not take them for granted. When wharfs are gone, a single dock is cherished. When cancer has not been victorious, every second counts. Even when we become complacent and lose our gratitude for the specifics, how can we ignore the awesome reminder of the spectacular grandeur of nature that abounds in every season?

I cannot deny that I’m reminded daily since it’s right here before my eyes. Yet wherever you live how blessed you are!!! The days of beauty, including those that are rainy, cloudy, windy, snowy, are just the wake up calls since we tend to become so complacent, so entitled, so ungrateful, so needy. That’s also being human since we get wrapped up in our wants and desires and so often lose sight of the bigger picture.

It is a gift to be alive, to be able to draw a single breath each morning and to have had restorative rest enabling us to begin anew each day. Not only are we amazingly blessed for that reality, we have been given free will, choice of how to live that blessed day, every day, deciding whether we will serve or take, build or tear down, appreciate or complain, love or hate.

What shalom I am experiencing just staring out my window. I should actually be completely stressed since I’m leaving to have a colonoscopy after I finish this Shabbat encouragement. Just a coincidence that the inspiration came just now? Not in my worldview, for I know that’s how much He loves us, how intimate our relationship, how He ministers to each of us all the time, even in our anxiety and suffering. That is how HaShem through Yeshua lives with us each day, helping us to make the right choices, to feel less afraid, to want to stay positive.

Having trouble hearing His promptings?

All we have to do to hear Him is to love Him. For when we do, there is no room in our hearts for negativity as it becomes filled with His divine love of us. Especially when invited, that is when His Love pours in. That reality is the one that powers our lives with goodness and hope, no matter what.

Now is the time to love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. For with Him is our only hope.

Shabbat shalom.

Diane