Let My People Know

"My little wrongdoing is as important as my whole life"


“Just as nothing is too big for God, so, too, nothing is too small for God.


Nothing is insignificant or small enough to go unnoticed, because God has an all-encom­passing view that contains absolutely everything.

There­fore, the belief that something is so insignificant that it can escape God’s attention is worse than blasphemy: it is nonsense.

The very notion of facing the Infinite means facing it down to the last detail, and the tiniest detail be­comes as significant as one’s whole being.

But does God care at all?

Why should God care?

For me, as a human being, my life, my business, or my gold­fish may be very important; but I am limited in every sense, and therefore many things bother or gladden me.

God is infinite; why should the Almighty care for the whole universe, as huge as it may seem to me?

It is very difficult to give an answer on God’s behalf; but we can say that He obviously does care.

For some in­explicable reason, God bothered to create the world, and form quite elaborate rules (which we call “laws of nature”) for its functioning—and that means that God cares.

The world may be, for God, a plaything or an experiment—but He bothered to have it.

Since the world exists, one cannot say that God is so vast as not to be aware of it, and in some way, care for it.

Therefore, if I do something wrong, my little wrongdo­ing is as important as my whole lifetime, and my barely expressed thought is as significant as the most glorious epic poem.

The cry of a little child weeping in bed is as audible to God as what the President of the United States says in a public address transmitted from coast to coast.

It is only the idolatry of making God in a finite size, with finite knowledge, that gives rise to the question, ‘Does God care?’ with all its ensuing confusion.”

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz


From
Simple Words by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz