Pesukei D’Zimrah: V’charot Imo Habrit: Holding Our Hand

“And You established with him (Abraham) the covenant.” Why does it say that God made the Brit ‘with’ him? Because we know that Abraham asked the Holy One, Blessed Is He:

Who will circumcise me? God said: You will. Right away, Abraham took a knife and was about to cut, but he was afraid because he was old (that he wouldn’t do a proper job). What did The Holy One, Blessed Is He, do? He sent out His hand and held the knife with Abraham as Abraham performed his circumcision. As it says (Nehemia 9: 7-8): “It is You Who are God, the Lord, Who chose Abraham”. Then, it doesn’t state “V’Charot Lo HaBrit”, but “V’Charot Imo”, and You established with him. This teaches you that God was holding him. (Bereishit Rabbah)

We try to live our lives as an expression of the covenant made between God and Abraham and between God and each one of us.

Yet, sometimes, we are also scared. Regardless of how young or old we are, we tremble and hesitate. We are unsure of how to perform certain commandments, we are afraid that our prayers will not be effective, we struggle in our learning, we worry about the quality of our service to God.

But we are not doing it on our own! “V’charot Imo”; God will place His hand on ours and do it with us. He assists us as we open our lips to praise Him, He teaches us the words of His Torah, He guides us as we follow His Mitsvot and He holds our hand as we walk on His path.

And every time we become aware of how God is helping us develop our relationship with Him, we are renewing the covenant of love that He made with our ancestor Abraham; God’s hand holding Abraham’s, God’s hand holding ours.