Ashrei 3: Sharing God’s Goodness

Sharing God’s Goodness:  The theme of this psalm, after a quick reading, seems to be the great goodness and compassion of God. “God’s mercies are on all of God’s works”. The Midrash teaches that this is actually not the correct translation. The sages of the Midrash understood the verse to that God’s mercy was placed on us and in us. God granted us the priceless gift of sharing His compassion. God gave us the ability to be compassionate. In fact, God gave us the ability to share God’s compassion with the world.

We are sharing with God every time we are compassionate. Our compassion is experiencing God’s compassion, Our ability to be compassionate is God’s. It is a God-like attribute. This is why the verse says, “It is good,” it is good when we share God’s compassion.

The greatest goodness that God gave is the ability to grow, and when we realize that many of the qualities we experience as a human being are actually sharing the qualities of God, then we have accessed an unbelievable key to tremendous growth and development. This adds sanctity to many of things we do.

Imagine that you are walking on the street and you see a bird dying, and you have compassion. You go home and you feel sad about the wounded bird, or you actually did whatever you could to help the bird. It is positive to experience the compassion, and even better to do something to express the compassion. However, it is usually an experience that is easily forgotten. When we understand and are aware that our compassion was actually an expression of one of God’s qualities we achieve a high spiritual level simply though experiencing the compassion. We are sharing with the Creator. We are attaching to God.