When Jay was a child his parents gave him a new T-shirt for his birthday. He put it on right away and proudly wore it all day.
When he
appeared the next morning in the shirt, his dad asked him, “Jay, does that
shirt make you happy?”
“Not as much
as yesterday,” Jay replied.
That’s the
problem with material acquisition: Even the good things of life can’t give
us the deep, lasting happiness we so strongly desire. Though we may have
many possessions, we may still be unhappy. The whole premise of all those
daytime soap operas depicts rich people were very unhappy.
The world
offers happiness through material accumulation: new clothes, a new automobile,
an update to our phone or watch. But no material acquisition can make us as happy
as it did yesterday.
We need
something else. This week’s Torah portion, Eikev, reminds us that we need
something more than material goods. “Man does not live on bread alone, but that
man may live on anything the Lord decrees” (8:5) the Torah teaches us that
we shouldn’t live
only on bread. Because we were created in God’s own image, we are spiritual
beings and thus we can’t exist
on material goods alone. We need to satisfy what our souls desire. A diet of Torah,
mitzvot, and gemilut hasadim, acts of
lovingkindness will nourish that spiritual hunger.
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