Word Prompt – ARID – Ana Mandelbaum

Sometimes, life feels arid – not in climate, but in spirit. The routines stretch on, the inspiration runs dry, and even our davening can feel like dust. That was my mood last Thursday, stuck in traffic on the Belt Parkway, half-listening to a shiur on Tehillim. I refocused when the speaker paused and said, “David HaMelech didn’t write Tehillim when life was smooth. He wrote it from caves, from exile, from heartbreak. Tehillim is not a celebration of calm – it’s a lifeline from the middle of chaos.”

That hit me. We don’t have to wait until we feel inspired to reach for Hashem. We reach out because we feel dry, empty, arid. That’s the moment of connection – not after the storm, but during the drought. It shifted something inside me. I didn’t get out of the car a new person, but I got out head held a little higher. A little more quenched.