The Sha'arim writes that whenever we talk about somebody, it's as if the person is here. That means if you talk about Hacham Ovadia Yosef, it's like he's right here. If you talk about the Rambam, it's like he's right here. You talk about your grandfather who passed away, and you talk about him; it's literally like you bring him back. Anyone who ever lost a family member knows how true it is. I know when I talk about my grandfathers, my grandmother, or my father, whenever I talk about them, I feel like they are here. Here. That's how it works.
He says that because of that, in this week's parasha, when we talk about Avraham Avinu, it's as if Avraham Avinu is here, says the Kedusha Ari. And the Rebbe Middleton used to say that during this week, when Avraham Avinu, in essence, because we're talking about him, Avraham Avinu is here, he says, this week, Avraham Avinu who brought the world from darkness to light, we're in the week that Hashem brings the world from darkness to light. And therefore, he says, they said that if a person is in a world, in a life that has darkness, difficulty, and frustration, then in this week's parasha, where Avraham Avinu shows up on the scene and changes humanity, the world was a dark place for the first 1948 years, when Avraham Avinu was not yet in the world. But once he arrived, he brought light.
Every individual person, says the Kedusha Ari, who has a need to go out of darkness, who's experiencing some darkness in their life, could hope that this week the light could come. Because this week, when we talk about Avraham Avinu, it's as if he's here. And what did Avraham Avinu do? What did he accomplish? He took the world from darkness to light. You have the right to ask Hashem for your own personal self: If Avraham Avinu is here, and I'm going to live like Avraham Avinu, Hashem, let me breathe. Let me bring light, like Avraham Avinu, and let me see the darkness, the night, turn into day.
And so we asked three questions in the beginning. Why is this the first instruction Hashem is giving Avraham Avinu? The answer is, the first thing Hashem is telling Avraham Avinu is, “I want you to get up and go.” That means, “I want you to get up and do something that you have no understanding for, other than you're doing what I want.” What does Hashem want? What does Hashem want? What does Hashem want from me now? And sometimes, even after you do what Hashem wants from you now, it gets more difficult, like it did when Avraham Avinu went and all of a sudden he had to go to Mitzrayim, like it's harder. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes it gets more difficult before it gets clear. But our job and our responsibility is again to ask the question: What does Hashem want from me now? That's the whole question.
And he said that because of that, our third question initially, when we started, was: What does it mean that Avraham is the first person to have Hashem call Hashem “Adon, our master”? It means Avraham was the first person to live with Hashem, not just as his Moshel, not just as his ruler, but as his Melech, as his king, with an understanding that God's mastery, God's presence, is right here with me.
So in all likelihood, if I interviewed any person in this room, you have a little bit of darkness in some area of your life. You have a little bit of confusion in some area of your life. It might be medium. It might be worse than that. And you have something where you're not sure: What do I do? Who do I listen to? Where do I go? What we're seeing from all these great rabbis, and what we're seeing in the story of Avraham Avinu, is that you have to ask yourself the question Avraham Avinu asked himself his entire life. And every single time, even when it wasn't so clear after he made the decision, it always ended up clear and perfect in the end. When you have a hard decision, when you're a little confused, when you're a little frustrated, when you're like me and you're feeling somehow in pain, you have to ask yourself one simple, very direct, clear, challenging question that usually, deep down inside of you, you know the answer to: “I'm not sure what to do. What does Hashem want me to do now?” And that's the clarity of everything in front of you.