“Perhaps you will say in your heart: these nations are greater, more numerous, than I – how will I ever be able to drive them out (Deut. 7:17)?”
Moshe understands that this is what the Israelites will feel at the prospect of the enormous task of conquering the land. The enemies, the obstacles, are too large and too many for us. We feel small and incapable. How can we possibly deal with them all?
This is a familiar feeling, this feeling of overwhelm and impossibility. We are often in this place, this place of the small self, where we see ourselves – not incorrectly – as vulnerable and limited and surrounded by insurmountable obstacles to our goals.
The answer, Moshe says, is to remember God. “Do not be afraid of them.” Zachor tizkor — remember, oh, remember God and what God has done for you in the past (7:18). We quell our fears and our sense of inadequacy to the task at hand by remembering God’s part in this drama. If we are doing the work of God in the world – and surely all of our best work is God’s work – then we need have no fear of overwhelming obstacles. We are not small. “You shall not be broken before them, for Hashem your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God (7:21).”
We are not small when we are in touch, when we remember, this connection to God. There is inside each of us that inner point of connection which is infinite and indomitable, like its source. All those nations, all those obstacles, they do exist, but they somehow don’t matter, as Moshe says, they don’t break us, when we are in touch with this infinite side of ourselves. We see them and we persevere and keep climbing. We have work to do and God is with us. We are not daunted.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio at Pexels
