כי לא על הלחם לבדו יחיה האדם כי על כל מוצא פי ה’ יחיה האדם
A person does not live by bread alone, but rather a person lives by everything that comes out of the mouth of the Lord
(Deuteronomy 8:3, from this week’s parsha).
‘הנה ימים באים ונשלחתי רעב בארץ. לא רעב ללחם ולא צמא למים כי אם לשמוע את דברי ה
Behold, the days are coming – I will send a famine to the land, not a hunger for bread and not a thirst for water,
but rather to hear the words of the Lord (Amos 8:11).
The hunger inside us, the ache of yearning that gnaws at us just below the surface much of the time, wanting something, it is not a hunger for bread, nor a thirst for water, but a hunger for what comes out of the mouth of God, for the words of God, a hunger to hear, to listen, to return to connection, to be in dialogue and relationship with our Source, the Source of our life and of all that is living.
Sometimes this hunger manifests as a hunger for success, for power, for attention, for honor, for love, for approval, for belonging, but underneath all of these desires is a single yearning of the soul to return to its home, to return to connection to God.
Both Amos and Moshe emphasize the yearning not just for God, but specifically for God’s words. What we want is not just to know God but to feel that God is speaking to us, is relating to us, is seeing us and responding to us in particular. We yearn not just for God, but for an intimate communicative connection to God, for God’s words – to us.
How do we access this sense of direct relationship and communication? As always, there are many entry points. The Torah is the most obvious one. Tradition understands the first word of the ten commandments given on Sinai, Anokhi, as being an acronym for ana nafshi ketavit yehavit, “I wrote My soul down and gave it to you,” so that the Torah’s words are the written form of God’s soul – God’s essence – and through those words, we have continual access and connection to God. These words are God’s eternal and unfolding way of speaking to us; the same words are there every year, at all times, and yet somehow, each time we look, they speak to us in a different way, responding to where we are and what we need to hear.
We can hear God speaking to us right now through the words of Torah. And even if sometimes the message, the content, might not be clear, we can still feel the sense of intimate connection, the sense that here we are, at this moment, with a direct line to the divine, opening ourselves to hearing what God is saying to us. This connection, this relationship, is precisely what we are hungry for, perhaps the only thing that will ultimately be able to fill the hole of yearning inside us.
There are other entry points, as well, to God’s words. What emerged out of God’s mouth, out of God’s speech, was and is all of creation as well. God spoke and the world came to be, so that nature, the universe, the plants, the trees, the people around you, the sky above, the light that shines in your window, the miraculous functioning of your own body, and yes, even the bread that nourishes you, these, too, are God’s words and can speak to this hunger inside you, can be a form of communication and relationship with God. What does the evening light say to you? Or the butterfly that comes upon you when you are alone and desolate? The tree that stands so firm along your path? These, too, are God’s words, and can speak to us and fill us if we listen.
Sometimes God’s words are also spoken to us through the people around us, the people who were sent to us as angels, perhaps to deliver a particular message. Is there a recurring theme that you keep hearing from the people around you? Is there something an acquaintance or a friend said recently that felt like it was meant for you? These, too, are God’s words to us – divine lines of communication – and these, too, can answer and speak to the yearning inside us to be whole, to be connected to our Source.
Whatever comes out of the mouth of God, may we hear it and take it in and know that it is for us, that it sustains us, that we live by and through this connection, not by bread alone, but through the words spoken to us continuously by a loving God who, in our hunger, reaches out to us.
Perhaps the greater our hunger — the more urgently God calls — the closer we are getting to “the days that are coming,” to the wholeness that emerges from our return to this connection, individually, communally and globally.
Photo by Max Andrey at Pexels
