When the miracle becomes routine
A miracle does not become smaller when it becomes routine. Our sensitivity to it becomes smaller. Pidyon haben, arriving after thirty days, offers a powerful invitation to look again at what has already begun to feel ordinary.
Which person, ability or blessing in your life was once a prayer and has now become so ordinary that you barely notice it?
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Why is pidyon haben not performed immediately after birth, but only after thirty days? The Torah says, “Those to be redeemed, from the age of one month you shall redeem” (Numbers 18:16), and Maimonides rules that the obligation begins only once the son has completed thirty days (Mishneh Torah, Laws of First Fruits and Other Priestly Gifts 11:17). This is not a claim that the delay exists for the reason suggested here. But as a homiletic reflection, the timing touches something deeply human.
On the day a child is born, no one needs to remind the parents that a miracle has taken place. The heart is astonished on its own. Only hours ago this child was hidden; now there is a complete human being breathing, crying and opening his eyes. But days pass, then a week and another week. The miracle receives a name, a crib, bottles, diapers, doctor appointments and a sleep schedule. Not because the child is loved less, but because the human mind becomes accustomed even to the greatest gifts.
Then, after thirty days, pidyon haben arrives and says: stop again. Look again at what has already begun to feel normal. Maimonides rules that the father who redeems his son also recites Shehecheyanu (ibid. 11:5). A month after the birth, after sleepless nights and routine, the father again blesses God for having sustained him and brought him to this moment. There is a spiritual ability here that is not simple at all: not only to be moved by what we received today, but to renew our wonder at what has already been ours for a while.
The Song of Haazinu describes the opposite danger. “Yeshurun grew fat and kicked” (Deuteronomy 32:15), and later: “You neglected the Rock who bore you, and forgot the God who brought you forth” (32:18). Forgetting does not necessarily begin when a person suffers. Sometimes it begins precisely when life is good. Sforno explains that turning toward pleasures can weaken a person’s wisdom and awareness of God’s greatness (Sforno on Deuteronomy 32:18).
That pattern appears in ordinary life. A person prays for a child, and ten years later mostly notices the messy room. He prays for work, and after a few years complains that he has to go there again tomorrow. He prays for a spouse, and after years may stop seeing the person beside him. We do not stop receiving. We simply stop feeling that we received.
Real gratitude is not only the ability to say thank you when the gift arrives. Its deeper form is to continue seeing the gift after a month, a year or twenty years. Novelty moves almost everyone. Spiritual maturity is the ability to see again what has become familiar.
This also touches the season of repentance. It is easier to feel stirred on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The greater test is what remains when the phone returns, work returns, the pressure returns and life becomes ordinary again. Maimonides describes complete repentance not as a powerful moment of feeling, but as change that remains when a person meets the same kind of situation again and chooses differently (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 2:1-2).
Perhaps one of the most important prayers is not only: Master of the world, give me more blessings. Give me eyes that do not become blind to the blessings You have already given me. Let me say Shehecheyanu inwardly even over what has been in my home for a month, a year or many years. Let me recognize that some of the things that irritate me today are the very things I once prayed to receive.
Sometimes we ask God to change our life when what we truly need is for Him to restore our ability to see again the life He has already given us.
This article is part of the forthcoming book series “A Moment of Thought” (רגע אחד של מחשבה).