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Vayyikra

How does man relate to God? That in a nutshell is the primary question with which the first chapters of the book of Leviticus is concerned. In those chapters the common people learn what the Kohanim must do to find acceptance by God. In further chapters the book serves as a manual to teach the Kohanim exactly what must be done to offer sacrifices to God that He will accept.

In those early days of our faith, people did not know how to pray. Indeed they feared even saying God’s name. They recognized how small they were and how great God is. They recognized that God, for no particular reason, can choose to love one person and hate another. God, for no particular reason can grant one man poverty and the other great wealth.

In other words there was o reason for God to act in an arbitrary manner, after all He made the rules of existence up with creation itself. The prayers in the Torah are few and usually very short. Moses, when Miriam was sick with leprosy said only this: “Please God heal her.” And think of the chutzpah that he displayed—that mortal man, any mortal man, could expect God to listen to him and do something to heal his sister!

Prayer that developed with passing decades and centuries, prayer that seems so easy to us, was slow in development. Man had to learn something more about himself and the free will that he was granted. He had to learn more about his relationship with God to be brazen enough to speak to God.

How far we have come! In the world that we live in today many recognize the power of man and see a weakness in God. Many who can speak to God do not, and many believe that God is too weak to speak to man. For so many there has been a role reversal.

We have learned to close our eyes from the presence of God. The world about us speaks of God’s presence. God is so evident in the infinitely large and in the infinitely small. God’s voice is so distinct in the cries of the poor and afflicted. And so many of us, feigning strength, are too weak to recognize the godliness that surrounds us.

Once we could not speak to God because we perceived our own weakness. Today we have the same difficulty because we perceive our own strength. Too much or too little of most things is destructive.

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