Recently, three babies were born in this community whose stories should make every one of us appreciate babies forever.
The first was born to a wonderful couple. He was 50 when they married, and she was in her late thirties. They had actually dated ten years earlier, but for some reason they did not marry then. Later, they married. They are the most wonderful couple in the world, and they were trying to have children—he over 50, and she in her late thirties, around 40. A few weeks ago, they brought home a baby. The baby was a little premature, but is now healthy and will have a circumcision. That is one example.
The second example happened last week. At a circumcision, the ritual circumciser waved his knife and said, “This couple had been married for ten years when this man bought me this knife, seven or eight years ago. He said, ‘One day, you are going to use this knife to circumcise my son.’ Now, seven years after he bought it for me, seventeen years after he married, he has had a child, and I am using this knife to circumcise his son.”
The third story happened, I think, two days ago. Someone stood up at a circumcision and told this story: There was a couple who had not had children for, I think, eight or nine years. Last year, they went to the grave of the Ribnitzer Rebbe. At the grave, the man said, “If I have a baby, I am naming him after the Ribnitzer Rebbe, whose name was Chaim.” Within a year, a baby was born. I think it was on Monday that they held the circumcision and named the boy Chaim, together with his grandfather’s name—which I am not telling you. The day of the circumcision was the anniversary of the Ribnitzer Rebbe’s death.
We have to stop and recognize that so many incredible things are happening in our lives. That gives you a responsibility to move from creating to forming, a responsibility to see clearly, a responsibility to change your mind about people and realize that the people around you—spouses, children, parents—even if they have aspects that annoy you, are incredible. They are incredible, and you need to appreciate them. You need to acknowledge them and recognize the blessing that they are.
But do not stop with the people around you. Stop and acknowledge the One who gave you everyone around you. Look around and say, “God, the world You gave me is incredible. And I know what that means. It means that I have a great responsibility to step up, to wake up, to perform, to do, to change, to grow, to be great, to pray, to learn, to give and give, to do, to care, to think, to give, to pray, and to perform again and again and again. I know that is my responsibility.”
My brain does not want to see that. My brain would rather see October 7th the way these people do. My brain would rather see the blessings around me as reasons to complain, reasons to be annoyed, reasons to talk, and reasons to be distracted, so that I do not have to look in the mirror and say, “I am responsible for acting the way I need to act.” I do not want to do that.
But God, when You created man, You formed man, just as You form light. In a world that surrounds us with darkness, You gave us the ability—and, more importantly, the responsibility—to see light.