Praise God on Every Breath

Today's class is dedicated in memory of my uncle, Albert D. Sutton, Avraham Ben Emma a’h May this class should be an Ilui Nesham for him. We're discussing the trait of God, that He has tremendous tolerance because He’s constantly being disgraced. In his Sefer Shaar Hayirah, on the topic of fear (10th chapter), the Reshit Hochma, (a student of Rav Moshe Cordevero, author of the Tomar Devorah), says that a pious man once said, Don't rebel against your master when he is watching you . The only problem is, God is always watching us- so never rebel. And he says that every breath that we take is really a breath of God. As the pasuk says in Devarim 8,3 כִּ֛י עַל־כׇּל־מוֹצָ֥א פִֽי־יְהֹוָ֖ה יִחְיֶ֥ה הָאָדָֽם׃ Man lives from what emanates from the mouth of God. That means that every second we're living not off the food that we eat, not off the drinks that we drink, but from the fact that God is putting energy into us. That was the lesson of the manna . God is the One that's giving us energy, not anything that we eat or drink. And if that's the case, he says, all of our breathing should be for God. That's what David Hamelech’s final words in Tehilim meant: Kol Ha Neshama TeHallel Ya/ All souls should praise God. The Midrash Raba says that Neshama can be read as Neshima - as in: For every breath we have to thank God. Because every breath that we take is a breath of God. That's the biggest sign of how frail and feeble we are. We are fragile. If we don't breathe for a certain amount of time, we can't survive. But who's putting the oxygen into us? God is breathing oxygen into us. And he goes on and quotes his Rabbi that God is called the God that’s disgraced, for the reason we discussed previously, that God is giving us the energy and we sin with the energy He gives us. He gives a mashal of a king that gives his servant money to buy bread in order to live on. But instead of buying bread, the servant uses the money to buy a stick, and then he hits his master with the stick- the stick that he bought with the money that the master gave him! Is there any servant worse than that? That's God. He gives us our life. He gives us our breath. He gives us our energy to use for ourselves to serve Him and ultimately be rewarded. And instead, we buy a stick with it, and hit Him and work against Him. And yet, with all that being said, God continues to ignore, to have patience and tolerance, and continues to benefit us. And of course, the ultimate lesson is going be that we, who are not a God, who didn't give anybody anything much, should have a level of patience towards those that torment us or go against us.