“The watchmen who go round about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me. The guards of the walls lifted up my veil from me.” (5:7)
In her chosen separation from God's ways, Israel faces the negative outcome of coveting, lusting, haughtiness, anger, envy, indolence and indifference. Along with cruelty, ruthlessness, discrimination, oppression, intolerance and hatred. These are the watchmen circling the city (conscience) that struck and wound the goodness in ourselves.
The guards keep the walls of the Temple of Jerusalem, and they represent the positive traits and qualities that safeguard goodness as our common bond with God. They expose to our conscience our iniquities and the consequences of negative actions. They lift the veil of our living in denial. Therefore, in such predicament we realize that our only way out is to return to the qualities of goodness as our true essence and identity (“the daughters of Jerusalem”).
The goodness with which God created the material world relies and remains with our awareness of goodness, and the goodness we must be and do in order to make it prevail continuously. In this principle goodness transcends the limitations of time and space, for it is eternal.
“Thank God, for He is good; His loving kindness is eternal.” (I Chronicles 16:34, Psalms 100:5, 145:9, 25:6)
Hence, anything that isn’t good is deficient, lack, limited and temporary; and such as it doesn’t sustain life, for life’s existence depends on the transcendence of goodness which also makes life transcend. Thus we realize that while goodness sustains life, anything different from goodness destroys life.
In practical terms, all the traits and qualities of goodness and their ethical frame protect and enhance life, while the negative traits and trends seek to destroy it.
We acquire full awareness of goodness by removing all that is opposite to it from all levels and dimensions of consciousness. This is the real refinement we achieve by Torah study, which is following God’s ways and emulating His attributes. These contain the ground rules and guidelines to live from, by, in and for goodness.
“Good and upright is the Lord, therefore He instructs sinners in the [right] path. He guides the humble in justice, and He teaches the humble His way. All the paths of the Lord are loving kindness and truth to those who keep His covenant and His testimonies.” (Ibid. 25:8-10)
This refinement culminates in a lifestyle ruled by leading qualities to manifest goodness, also pointed out by the psalmist.
“Let integrity and uprightness help me, for my hope is in You [God].” (Ibid. 25:21)
This ethical frame defines the multiple ways to do goodness as acts of loving kindness, and thus we realize that they are indeed our own reward. This means that our benefit and reward are the fact of being God’s channel and vessel to manifest goodness.
We can’t give what we don’t have, and we can’t be what we are not. As we realize that goodness is who we are and what we have, God bestows it in us for us to be able to give it. Thus all the good things we do are continually coming to us.
We must insist that we make ourselves the vessel for goodness by removing from us all that is different from it, for it does not cohabit with anything opposed to its ways, means and attributes.
No comments:
Post a Comment