"Hashgachah Pratit"

My stepdaughter started college classes this week and it took me back to my own parental liberation. Mine came in stages…having returned from the highly structured and rigid basic military training and technical school, my real launching came as I loaded up my car to travel to my first duty assignment in Colorado. Having said my goodbyes, I began the trek with an avalanche of emotions, and by the time I hit the interstate, I was bawling my eyes out. “This is really it” I admitted.

We all remember the transition to supposed “adult” status post high school graduation, now knowing full well that we were far from being grown-up…and yet, perhaps the most noticeable change at that time of our lives was the drop off in parental supervision. Such is the case in my home…while my daughter still lives with us, she now lives a life of “on my own.”

Do you recall your own rite of passage, being launched into the world of self-reliance? We learned quickly then that the freedom we sought for so long didn’t feel so free, as we faced the future of self-care. When you’re out from under the protective wing of caregivers, somehow the early quest for freedom retrospectively feels a bit hasty.

As adults, we typically think fondly of childhood days spent under the supervision of our parents or caregivers. We assess those times as care-free and unencumbered. Any teenager would argue that perspective and yet, the more distance we gain from adolescence, the more we engage in “retrospective sense-making,” or reinterpreting our past to fit our current life paradigm. In any event, the aspect of being cared for or supervised is often something we long for as we face adult pressures, decisions, and expectations from others.

The Fatherhood of our God is interpreted differently with folks. And while it’s almost cliché to say that we typically relate to God the Father in similar fashion to our experience with our earthly fathers, it becomes vitally important to understand the difference between the two. On one hand, we can hide behind the effect our dad’s had on us, and project that onto our Abba…angry dad, absent dad, demanding dad…but what is the reality?

“Hashgachah pratit” is the Hebrew phrase that answers that question. It refers to God’s personal supervision of our lives. Hashgachah means “supervision” and pratit means “individual” or “particular.” There are stark implications to this understanding of Abba’s involvement in our lives. He is not distant; He is at hand. He wants to engage with us. He is interested in the minutiae of our experiences. He is not rageful, disengaged, or rigid with us, regardless of our day-to-day decisions. As one teacher put it, “God does not have a communication problem.” He is ready to speak to us, lead us, encourage us.

Consider the words of Yeshua: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” If we accept the fact that God is personally supervising our lives, it stands to reason that He is always standing at the door, waiting for us to open it. Truth be told, I can think of many times I purposefully shut the door in His face in order to sin intentionally and then typically kept the door shut for a period of time, acting as if He was not there…but nothing could be further from the truth. When prodigal me reopened the door, I was expecting a rod, but received an embrace.

The more we allow ourselves to be aware of His personal, intimate supervision, the more we dwell there, the more we engage with Him. “Try Me in this,” He offers. Keep the door open today haverim, and walk with the One who not only fashioned you and is intimately acquainted with you, but who also wants you to enjoy His personal supervision. Shalom!