First Blessing 15: Providence Part 4

“Elokainu vei’lokei avoteinu” Continued:

General Providence and Individual Providence:

If God wants our prayer, we must be important as individuals. The first feeling we should have in approaching God is awe, and that sense of awe comes from feeling so insignificant in comparison. We deal with our sense of insignificance even before beginning the meat of the Amidah. We must deal with the idea of Individual and General Providence at the outset because the first blessing is that which forces us to think about God, and the definitions of God. The other blessings in the Amidah are attributes of God. The first blessing forces us to consider the definitions of God. It may sound a little superfluous, but I would suggest that if anyone here would ask someone who just finished praying Amidah, “When was the last time you thought about the definition of God?” the person would probably say, “I don’t know, I guess a couple of weeks ago.”

So here we are praying to God, but we don’t even stop to think about who it is we are praying to, and with whom we are attempting to converse. We confront God in the first blessing and it deals with the biggest difficulty that comes up when you deal with God. God is impossible to understand. We are insignificant. But we must deal with God. And if we deal with God, we get lost. Therefore, right away we are informed that Individual Providence is that which completes General Providence.