As our private meeting with our Creator – also known as the Amidah prayer – winds down and we prepare to leave God’s Presence, we start saying our “thank-you’s.” This is the next-to-last blessing of our string of blessings. We thank God for all God is and for all God does for us.

We begin by addressing God in the usual way: “We acknowledge You, for You are the Eternal, our Almighty Source of Strength as well as the Almighty God of our ancestors, for ever and ever.” But right away we call God by less familiar names: “Rock of Our Lives, Shield of our Salvation – that is You, from generation to generation.” We have moved from established, almost generic theological terms, terms we use in a formulaic way all the time, to more urgent, existential terms that acknowledge our need for God in order for us to simply live and survive. And then we drop all descriptions and address God directly – “that is You.”

Our gratitude is then offered “for our very lives that are given over into Your hands and for our souls, deposited with You, and for Your miracles that are with us every day, morning, noon and night.” Our thanks is not in response to historical miracles like the Exodus. It is not given in gratitude for the gift of Torah and our Jewish heritage. It is expressed in appreciation for our very lives, which are considered the products of ongoing miracles. We have this sense of the miraculous when we witness a new birth, or when we escape great danger. But this prayer is full of such wonder for every second of our prosaic lives.

There is nothing specifically Jewish about this blessing. It is universally applicable to every leaving being. Indeed, as I pointed out last month, this second-to-last blessing stands in corresponding, chiastic relation with the second, opening blessing of the Amidah. That blessing also praises God as mighty. But God’s might is exemplified in “sustaining life with love, giving life to the dead with great mercies, supporting those who fall, healing the sick, and freeing the captive.” None of these Divine acts are specifically directed at the Jews. They are universally experienced. If the first blessing focuses on our compassionate ancestors, the founders of the Jewish people, the second goes beyond Jewish history and experience to embrace the world. So it is, as well, for the next-to-last blessing of our Amidah. It is a prayer of gratitude for all that lives.

Where this blessing goes beyond its opening partner is in moving away from crisis examples of God’s love and, instead, celebrating all of life as a miracle, including its most mundane moments. It is in these non-dramatic moments of life that we are meant to recognize God’s great goodness. “You are ‘The Good One’ for Your mercies never get used up; You are ‘The Merciful One’ for Your love has never ended.”

As we immerse ourselves in this feeling of gratitude we notice something about the experience: It feels good to feel good! If, for a moment, through this prayer, we have awoken from our everyday obliviousness to the miracle of our being alive, if we can sense that tiny pleasure of revitalization that comes from rediscovering that we are simply able to breathe and to feel, then we may smile a bit in surprise and delight. We are being embraced all the time. But we ignore or resist the hug of the air and the light, or the darkness, that God has surrounded us with. Now, for a second, we have allowed ourselves to feel the embrace. It feels good to be loved.

This gift of goodness that we enjoy is not an award that we have worked hard  to earn. It is a gift of life and love that is prior to any judgment or requirement. But, if it is a gift that does not follow from satisfying an obligation, it is a gift that generates an obligation. Therefore, as we feel the sweetness of the gift of life and love that we have received, we do not let it become a moment of self-satisfaction. God’s model of generous love awakens us to our own capacity for generous love. Because we notice how good it feels to be subject to generous loving, we are impelled to a feeling of generous love also. And we conclude this blessing in a prayer of universal love and hope:

“Let all who are alive thank You and discover, just as we have, how good it feels to feel blessed and loved, for ‘The Good One’ is Your Name, and it feels so good to thank You.”

Our prayer is that every single creature might feel that life is good. This returns us to the corresponding opening blessing. There we mention God’s support for the weak and the sickly and the un-free. Now, as we seek to sensitize ourselves to our own good fortune and privilege, we recognize that the torments of life can obstruct the simple pleasure of inhaling life as a goodness. But no living creature should be prevented from feeling how good it is to be alive. That feeling should not have to be earned. It should be freely given and freely enjoyed.

What is our role in making it possible for others to feel the kind of simple gratitude that we feel? If the vision of being agents of expansive love is too daunting to embrace right away, then let us at least start moving in that direction one step at a time, with smaller hopes and lower demands. Could we start with these commitments? – If God is so Good as to supply us with light, then may we never be the agents that darken the world for others. If God is so Good as to give us the air we inhale, then may we never be the ones to cause another living creature to cry out, “I can’t breathe!”

Image:  “"With arms wide open…?"” by kreezzalee is licensed under CC BY 2.0