Parshat Ki Tavo
We spend a surprising amount of life waiting to enjoy it.
When work calms down.
When the kids are settled.
When we finish what needs to be done.
When life feels a little less complicated.
Then we’ll relax.
Then we’ll enjoy ourselves.
This week’s parsha gives us a very different way to think about joy.
“Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart.”
Joy isn’t supposed to wait.
It belongs in the life we’re living now.
Simcha in the Torah is shared. It happens around a table, in conversation, in celebration, in song, in community, in the moments when we stop standing outside our lives and simply enter them.
Joy doesn’t need a prerequisite.
Joy doesn’t need a prerequisite.
It can be in tonight’s dinner.
In music playing in the kitchen.
In laughing with someone you love.
In a walk, a conversation, a celebration, a quiet moment that feels unexpectedly full.
Life can still be unfinished.
There can still be things to solve and places we’re trying to get to.
But joy doesn’t have to live on the other side of any of them.
That may be one of the gifts of simcha.
Not waiting for life to finally arrive.
Choosing to make room for joy in every season of the life we’re living.
As Shabbat approaches, may we have the wisdom not to postpone joy, the presence to fully enter the moments that matter, and the openness to create and share more of them with the people around us.
Shabbat Shalom!
