Hodu: Kavanot 1
Hodu
Give Thanks
The Power of our Relationship with God
There comes a point in prayer where God will literally begin to take over our prayer for us. Our mouths become instruments that God plays while we are praying. That is what Hodu is.
The first section was composed by King David to celebrate the placement of the Ark in its penultimate home, its return from the Philistines and to its proper place. To fully return and re-connect with God is to appreciate the Godliness that each one of us possesses. The only way to appreciate the Godliness that we posses is to develop it. That’s what Torah and its mitzvot are for. The goal is to live life with passion. The goal of this prayer is that you pray so you can learn to live with passion.
The recitation of Hodu is tantamount to a declaration of our belief in the World to Come with the coming of the Messiah. We are thus praying to God for our eternal needs (as well as for our immediate, physical needs).
We remind ourselves that every day of our lives we have the ability to make leaps in our natural process of growth. We are not confined or limited today to the course of events that would naturally flow from yesterday. Abraham and Moses showed us that it is possible to do what one would not expect from a normal human being.
Tool Box
God helps us pray.
We sing God’s praises desiring that He will use our mouths as His instrument of song.
We pray to merit living with passion.
We are committed to developing out inner Godliness.
We focus on our eternal needs as well us the more mundane.
We measure our lives by their eternal value and hope to focus all we do with that value in mind.
There is no limit to what we can accomplish.
We recall the merit of those who moved civilization ahead by generations.