Nishmas Day 23 - Rabbi Yechiel Spero | He Felt the Heartbeat with his Fingers
עַל כֵּן אֵבָרִים שֶׁפִּלַּגְתָּ בָּנוּ,
וְרוּחַ וּנְשָׁמָה שֶׁנָּפַחְתָּ בְּאַפֵּינוּ,
וְלָשׁוֹן אֲשֶׁר שַׂמְתָּ בְּפִינוּ…
The limbs You formed within us, the breath and soul You breathed into us, and the tongue You placed in our mouths.
When asked to draw a person, most of us draw a stick figure. A circle, a line, a few strokes — and there you have it, a person.
Hashem could have done the same.
Instead, He created the human body with depth, with intricacy, with a complexity so vast that we could study it for a lifetime and still barely begin to understand it.
In the words of Rabbi Yechiel Spero:
“I was walking through an amusement park and, always on the lookout for a good story, I stopped a security guard and asked him what the most intense moment of his job had been.
‘I was once with a friend when he got shot,’ he said. ‘I tried my best to stop the bleeding, but nothing was working. I didn’t know what else to do.
So I put my fingers into the wound in his chest… and suddenly, I felt his heartbeat.’
He paused.
‘And when I felt that beat—when I realized just how alive he still was—I wasn’t ready to give up anymore. I kept going until I knew he was going to make it.’”
We move through our days without thinking about the masterpiece that lives within us—the systems, the synchronization, the life pulsing through us.
Before anything else, before what Hashem gives us or does for us — He gave us us.
And that alone is something we can spend a lifetime learning how to thank Him for.
