Many squirrels in the area I live experience their last moments frozen in headlights, with a big black tire racing towards them.
Recently, while driving with a friend, I expressed my sympathy, "Don't you think it's the saddest thing? It was so in this world, climbing trees and chasing his friends, and then the next second he's squished to cement."
My friend felt no compassion and casually joked, "It's okay, he's meeting his maker."
Although it was only a joke, the term "meeting his maker" caught me off guard and got me thinking. In fact, it’s pretty common to hear the afterworld referred to as the place where those transitioning from this world to the next meet G-d, their maker.
But the problem with this is that it paints a picture of this world as a place void of up-close time with G-d – a place where G-d is distant, maybe even absent.
I mean, if going to heaven is where we meet our maker, then what's this world about?
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When we refer to G-d as a maker, the creator of all life, it is this world that is the object of the description. G-d is our maker and G-d formed us as physical beings and places us in this material world.
Avraham knew this. Growing up in a home where idol worship was pervasive, he looked at the world and saw One Maker. For Avraham, the entire universe - from the dust on the ground, to the stars in the sky - was an opportunity to see G-d. He knew that G-d was in reach everywhere, and even more revealed through His creations than anywhere else. Looking at the sun and the moon and everything beneath them, Avraham saw the wisdom and wholeness - and he realized that the only Being behind them is the one who is intimately tied to His creations, so much so that they are one.
Consequently, when G-d reveals himself to Avraham, we are not told of Avraham's shocked gasp or trembling body. Just by opening his eyes, Avraham had been meeting G-d everyday since the age of three.
Why look forward to a different time, or specifically death, to be the place we greet G-d “in person"? Our G-d is one who is invested in, not separated from, His creations, and we therefore see G-d right here, right now, and all the time. G-d is in the people we meet and the falling leaves outside.
What in this world is not the place we meet our maker?
The next time someone refers to death and says something about "meeting our maker" say "What? But I just met G-d" and show her. When all the worlds' inhabitants are opening their eyes to G-d right here and right now, this life shines with the divine. Then our lives are directed towards encountering and unleashing the G-dliness within and around us, and meeting our maker takes on a whole new meaning.
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