I often wonder whether we choose to believe or it is something that comes to us. In other words, is faith an active choice or is it our human response, of sorts, to our human experience. In this month of Elul, as we engage in the preparation for the High Holy Days, our choices, and certainly those about faith, are at the fore of our minds.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, "Faith is not a thing that comes into being out of nothing. It originates in an event. In the spiritual vacancy of life something may suddenly occur that is like the lifting of a veil at the horizon of knowledge. A simple episode may open sight of the eternal. A shift of conceptions, boisterous like a tempest or soft as a breeze, may swerve a mind for an instant or forever. For God is not wholly silent and man is not always deaf. God's willingness to call men to His service and man's responsiveness to the divine indications in things and events are for faith what sun and soil are for the plant." (The Holy Dimension p. 333)
If faith is a response, a growth, how can one ensure it's health?
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