At our Israel365 office in Beit Shemesh, my colleagues and I on the content and design team sit in a row of little cubicles. You can probably picture the scene. We are all plugging away at our own projects, each of us staring at a computer screen for more hours than we would probably like to admit. Recently, I started having some neck pain. Apparently, spending my days hunched over a laptop is not doing wonders for my posture.
So I bought one of those simple laptop stands. For those who have never seen one, it is basically a little platform that raises your computer several inches off the desk, bringing the screen closer to eye level. It is amusingly low-tech for a device meant to improve my very high-tech workday. But it worked!
After using it for a little while, I mentioned to one of my colleagues, “You know, everything is better when you’re looking up.”
Of course, we work at Israel365. We spend our days knee-deep in Bible verses. She looked at me and laughed. “Isn’t that basically straight out of Psalms?”
Touché.
I lift my eyes to the mountains. From where will my help come? It is one of those biblical verses that feels all too familiar. We sing it. We quote it. We hang it on our walls. We turn to it in difficult moments, and for good reason. There is something deeply comforting about the image of a person in distress physically lifting his eyes upward and remembering that his help comes from God.
But there is another way to hear one small word in this famous verse.
Me’ayin.
In the straightforward reading, me’ayin means “from where.” From where will my help come? But the Hebrew word ayin can also mean “nothingness.” Read through that lens, the question takes on another dimension: What happens when I look up not because I desperately need something, but when I need nothing at all?
We know how to look up when something is wrong.
When someone is sick, we pray. Before an operation, we pray. When someone is struggling financially or emotionally, we pray. When we are frightened or overwhelmed and have exhausted every solution we can think of, turning toward God feels almost instinctive. And we also know how to look up when something extraordinary goes right. A healthy baby after a difficult pregnancy. An unexpected piece of good news. Arriving somewhere safely when the journey felt uncertain. Those are the moments when “Thank God” comes spilling out naturally.
But what about an ordinary Tuesday?
What about the morning when everyone wakes up healthy, there is food in the refrigerator, work to do, people we love, and no particular crisis demanding our attention?
I pray every day. I make blessings before and after I eat. The rhythms of Jewish life are filled with words of gratitude. And yet, if I am being truthful, familiarity can turn even gratitude into routine. The words leave my mouth while my mind is already moving on to the next thing.
It is much harder to stop in the middle of an unremarkable day, lift my eyes, and simply say: This is good.
We are very good at looking up from the depths. Perhaps we also need to learn to look up from the nothing. From the moments when nothing hurts. Nothing is wrong. Nothing needs fixing. Nothing miraculous has happened.
Just life, being good.
My little laptop stand has not transformed my spiritual life. It has, however, made my neck feel better. And every once in a while, as I catch myself sitting a little straighter and looking a little higher, I remember that conversation in the office.
Everything really is better when you look up.
