Faith is most often found when it is being tested. Tested by the people in our lives, tested by natural phenomena, tested by evil. And while it may have been waiting in the wings, it comes out when most needed. Our job is to embrace it.

I learned throughout my life that I can lose faith in people, I can be knocked down by the challenges of life, I can be confused and angry with the existence of evil. But those things didn’t have the power to destroy my faith. I couldn’t let them. I still had faith that there is good in the world. I still had faith that there are good people in my life. I still had faith that while life threw moments of hurt and pain at us, we were always healing.

I wouldn’t have known this without facing the truth that evil does exist. That people can do horrible things. That life is full of challenges. Without this knowledge, my faith would be hollow. Instead, my faith is fluid yet solid. Full of hope that goodness and justice and compassion would once again take over. Without the knowledge of evil, there is no faith in good.

I know this is a lot to take in and it can sometimes be hard to face the truth of what exists in our world. Our job does not have to be to co-exist with evil. Our job can be to acknowledge it, draw on our faith, and then do our work to extinguish it. And though we may never reach that day in our own lifetime, we have faith that the work we do and the contributions that we make matter!!

Faithfully yours,

Rabbi Gabi