V'al Nisecha SheB'chol Yom

Good morning everyone. Welcome back to Learn to Daven - Day 253.

Let me ask you something. When was the last time you saw a miracle?

Most people, if they're honest, answer in decades. A recovery the doctors couldn't explain. A near-miss on the highway. Maybe never.

And then you get to this line of Modim, and it quietly disagrees with you. V'al nisecha sheb'chol yom imanu - for Your miracles that are with us every day. Not the miracles of our history. Not the miracles we hope for. The ones from today. The bracha is written on the assumption that between waking up and reaching shul this morning, you passed through several.

So either the siddur is exaggerating, or we're missing something. And the Ramban, at the end of Parshas Bo, tells us exactly what we're missing - in one of the most famous passages he ever wrote.

The Ramban says the point of the big, loud, public miracles - Egypt, the sea splitting - was never the events themselves. They were a training course. From the great open miracles, he says, a person comes to recognize the hidden ones. And then he goes all the way: a person has no share in the Torah of Moshe until he believes that everything happening to us is miracle. All of it. There is no such thing as "just nature" running on its own underneath.

In other words: nature is not the opposite of miracle. Nature is miracle on a schedule. The sun rose this morning, the same as always - and the Ramban wants you to hear "the same as always" not as evidence that it's ordinary, but as evidence that Someone is astonishingly consistent.

Now, if the world is actually saturated with miracles, why don't we see any?

The Gemara in Niddah answers with five words that explain most of a human life: ein baal haness makir b'niso - the one the miracle happens to doesn't recognize his own miracle. God is doing wonders for you, the Gemara says, and you specifically are the person worst positioned to notice, because you're inside them. You never see the illness you didn't get. You never meet the accident that didn't happen. The recipient is the last to know.

That's why this line is in the siddur. Modim doesn't thank God for the miracles you noticed - if it did, most mornings it would have nothing to say. Modim installs the noticing. It's corrective lenses, three times a day.

And listen to the word the bracha chooses: imanu - with us. Not miracles You did for us, like a delivery that arrives and is over. Miracles that are with us - present tense, ongoing, walking alongside. Like a companion who has been next to you so long, so reliably, that he's become invisible. The most constant presences in our lives are always the least seen ones. Nobody notices their own heartbeat.

The Alter Rebbe takes this one step further in Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, building on a teaching of the Baal Shem Tov. The verse says l'olam Hashem d'varcha nitzav bashamayim - forever, God, Your word stands in the heavens. The Baal Shem Tov read that literally: the word that created the sky is still standing in it, speaking it into being right now. Creation wasn't an event; it's an activity. If God paused for one instant, the world wouldn't break - it would simply not be. Which means this morning's sunrise wasn't momentum from last week. It was fresh.

So look at the bracha's schedule: erev vavoker v'tzohorayim - evening, morning, and noon. Sound familiar? Maariv, Shacharis, Mincha. The Anshei Knesses HaGedolah set the frequency of our thanks to match the frequency of the wonders. We check in three times a day because that's roughly how often a person can go before the lenses fog over again.

So here's what I want you to do with this line today, and it takes ten seconds. When you reach v'al nisecha sheb'chol yom, pick one. Just one thing from the last twenty-four hours that you've been filing under "normal" - the fact that you woke up, that your kids did, that food exists and you can taste it - and reclassify it. Move one file from the "nature" drawer to the "miracle" drawer. That's the whole avodah. The miracles don't need your recognition to keep coming. But you need it, to know the kind of world you're living in.

Tomorrow: the next phrase makes an enormous claim - that God's mercy has never once run out - and the surprise is where in Tanach those words were first said. It is the last place you'd ever look.