De todo un poco

“[Time] means many, many things. Sometimes I feel like we don’t have enough, and sometimes I feel like we have the perfect amount. We can use our time in so many different ways, I try to use it well regardless of how I’m spending it. Spending it — an interesting turn of phrase, no?”

Saint Peter Walking on the Waters

Artist: Claudius Lavergne (French, 1815-1887)

Date: 1878

Medium: Graphite pencil, charcoal, blending stump, pastel and highlights of white gouache on beige paper

Emigrants (Émigrés)

Artist: Wilhelm Wachtel (Polish, 1875-1952)

Date: 1916

Medium: Oil on canvas laid on board

Mother and Child (Maternal Kiss)

Artist: Mary Stevenson Cassatt (American, 1844-1926)

Date: 1896

Medium: Pastel on wove paper

When G-d wanted to make David a king … He didn’t give him a crown. He gave him Goliath.

When He wanted to make Joseph a leader … He didn’t give him a palace. He sent him to prison.

When G-d wanted to elevate Moses … He didn’t give him a stage. He gave him decades in the wilderness.

When G-d wanted to make Esther a queen … He gave her a crisis, and Haman.

Time and again, we see: G-d doesn’t elevate people through ease, rather through struggle.

Because it’s not despite the challenge that we rise. It’s through it. That’s how the human spirit is made and rises higher.

We don’t know what the new year will bring. But we do know this: We were not born for comfort. We were born for meaning.

We weren’t placed in this world to hide from its problems—we were created to illuminate and solve them.

And if, this year, you find yourself walking through a wilderness … or standing before your own personal or professional Goliath … Remember: That’s not a detour from your destiny. That is your calling.

The Last Supper

Artist: Philippe de Champaigne (Flemish, 1602-1674)

Date: ca. 1652

Medium: Oil on canvas