The Month of Repentance
A time of repentence
A time of reflection
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven…
a time to keep and a time to throw away. Eccles. 3.
Often at New Year, so many people make a bucket list or create resolutions of health or self-discipline or self-care. Usually these things focus on betters ones personal life in a specific way, across a variety of different aspects of life. The Biblical or Jewish month of Elul is just such a time, but it is a time of more depth and meaning and promise.
Elul is a time for searching, for pulling personal weeds, for focusing on the needed places for growth and renewal in our spiritual walks. It is not a heavy paced renewal of committing to a completely different lifestyle or turning over a new leaf. It is not necessarily for us to take the bull by the rhetorical horns, on our own.
For those of us who strive for an on going relationship with our covenant G-d, it's a time for renewal, regeneration, and hope. A time to look back at the year we have had, and see how we can draw closer to G-d. It is a time to acknowledge the breadth of those choices that drive us away from Him. It is a time to examine those habits that have benefitted our relationship to G-d, as well as our relationship to the world around us—those habits that have helped us to love Him first and most, and to “love others as ourselves.
This time of year was the month of the grape harvest. A month for pulling in the produce, for pacing it down into juices to be bottled and fermented for later. A time of slow methodical treading of the winepress. It seems to me this would be a good time for introspection. While we go about our less agricultural societies, what are those rhythmic or quiet but needed jobs where you would have time to spend in prayer, in introspection, in meditation. May we pray for eyes to see the times we have that would be most fruitful- maybe its driving to and from work, maybe its folding laundry, or washing up dishes after dinner.
The beauty of Elul is a month of looking. It isn’t locked into a day or two. It is a slowing down of the internal cycle to focus on what matters most. Maybe its a gentle fore-runner to Yom Kippur. But for now it is a slow paced examination.
Do we “Shema” every day- Listening with the intent to obey? Do we closely look for the next five minutes we can do better- Praising our Father for the Holy Spirit who will “teach us in the way we should walk.”
How do you view Elul? Do you have any habits or patterns or customs that you observe at this peaceful time of year leading up to the High Holy days? Is your excitement mounting?
“Observe this day whom you will serve…” and commit with your whole heart once again to this daily walk of emunah- faith.
