Hashem Is Right Here

A rabbi told me he once heard a concept that made his tefillah so much better. He said, imagine a person, lo aleinu, lying in a hospital bed whose body suddenly could no longer perform its basic functions on its own. ​ First, he could no longer breathe. Immediately, the doctors would have to put him on a ventilator, sending oxygen into his lungs to keep him alive. Then imagine his heart could no longer pump his blood properly. Now he would need another machine to circulate his blood for him. His kidneys stopped filtering the waste from his bloodstream, so he would need dialysis. His body could no longer properly take in nourishment, so he would need a feeding tube. If his heart's electrical system could no longer maintain the proper rhythm, he would need a pacemaker to send the signals necessary to keep it beating correctly. Picture this person surrounded by machines, with tubes and wires going everywhere. One machine is breathing for him, another is helping circulate his blood, another is cleaning his blood, another is supplying his nourishment, and another is regulating his heartbeat. Without all that assistance, he wouldn't be able to survive. And now, think about ourselves. We walk around without any of those machines, Baruch Hashem. But that doesn't mean those things aren't being done for us. It means Hashem Himself is doing them. Every second, Hashem is making our hearts beat. He is causing our lungs to expand and contract. He is putting oxygen into our bloodstream and sending that blood throughout our bodies. He is causing our kidneys to filter our blood. He is enabling our digestive systems to take food and transform it into nourishment that gives energy to every part of the body. He is keeping the countless electrical signals traveling throughout our bodies exactly as they need to. At night, we don't need to plug ourselves into anything. We just go to sleep. And while we are completely unaware of what's happening, Hashem continues operating every system. The heart keeps beating, the lungs keep breathing, the blood keeps circulating, the kidneys keep filtering, and the brain keeps functioning. Thousands upon thousands of processes continue taking place without our giving them a single thought. When a person thinks about this, he begins to realize how close Hashem is to him. Hashem is giving me this breath right now, and now He's giving me another one. He just made my heart beat again and again. He is giving me life at this very moment. When a person truly internalizes this, his entire experience of tefillah can change. Because one of the things that sometimes makes tefillah difficult is that although we know Hashem hears us, He can feel so far away. Imagine someone desperately needed something from the President. He sees the President sitting inside his car with the window closed and begins screaming, trying desperately to get his attention. "Mr. President, please, I need your help!" Then the window opens, but the man continues screaming. The President looks at him and says, "You don't have to scream. I'm right here. I'm listening to what you have to say." Sometimes when we pray, we feel as though Hashem is somewhere far away and we have to somehow get our tefillah to Him. But when a person realizes that the One he is speaking to is the very One who is giving him the breath with which he is speaking, everything changes. Hashem is so close to me. I don't have to get His attention. I don't have to wonder whether He hears me. I could whisper the faintest whisper, and He's hearing every word. And then a person could think about something even greater. Hashem who is so close to me loves me beyond anything I could comprehend. And so the person could speak to Hashem with such a beautiful feeling: "Hashem, You're right here with me. You're giving me the breath that I'm using right now to speak to You. And You love me more than I could ever imagine. Please, Hashem, I need Your help. Please give me what I need." And if Hashem gives him what he asks for, he thanks Him. And if He doesn't, he knows that the same Hashem who loves him and is giving him every breath knows that what he is asking for is not best for him at this moment. Tefillah becomes so much better when Hashem is no longer considered somewhere far away in the heavens. Every heartbeat reminds us that He is right here. Every breath tells us, He is sustaining me right now. And when we get up to stand in front of Him to pray, we are speaking to the One who loves us and is closer to us than we could ever imagine.