Daily Devotionals

This is the greatest and most important mitzvah. And a second is similar to it (Matthew 22:38-39).

There are few things in our spiritual lives more important than understanding God's priorities. In the 1960s, the famous singing rabbi, Shlomo Carlebach, was sent by the Lubavitcher rebbe (head rabbi) to San Francisco to teach halakhah (the way of Torah) to young Jews. After a year, Carlebach told his rebbe, "I have a hundred who love Shabbat [Sabbath] and the mitzvot [God's commands]!" The rebbe replied, "I hear men and women are sitting together, and the men hear kol ishah (women's voices) during worship. This must stop." Reb [Rabbi] Shlomo replied, "Rebbe, please excuse me, but these one hundred have been far away in heart and spirit. If so soon I tell them they cannot sit together, seventy will leave; and if I tell them they cannot sing together, another twenty-nine will leave—and the one who will stay is a fool to whom I can teach nothing! What good is worrying about such a bandaid while the body is having a heart-attack?" The rebbe would not budge. So Reb Shlomo left the Lubavitcher community and became so fruitful in his work that there is virtually no synagogue in the Western world that does not sing Shlomo Carlebach's songs.

Right priorities are central to spiritual life. May we discern God's heart to better understand his priorities in our lives.

...pray, "Teach me, Oh Lord, your architecture for my life, and I will seek to build according to your design."

BC