For the week of September 12, 2026 / 1 Tishri 5787

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Rosh Hashanah
Torah: Bereshit/Genesis 21:1-34; B’midbar/Numbers 29:1-6
Haftarah: 1 Shmuel/1 Samuel 1:1–2:10
Originally posted the week of September 19, 2009 / 1 Tishri 5770 (updated)

There is none holy like the LORD; there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God. (1 Shmuel/1 Samuel 2:2)

God gets a lot of attention. We hear about him all the time from the mouths of believers and non-believers alike. He is adored, he is scorned, he is exalted, he is mocked. Though many try, he cannot be ignored. I don’t think there is a being or concept in all of human experience upon which so much effort has been spent trying to disprove. As for those who choose not to ignore him, how to relate to him has been far from straightforward. Millions of people claim some sort of belief in God, but the differences among the various versions of him are so great that they turn off many curious seekers, who think it impossible to come to any definite understanding. However, it doesn’t have to be this way.

To some, the Bible is just a book of superstitions and myths—one of a multitude of human attempts to define supposed spiritual reality. That it claims to reveal the one true God is taken to be no different from all the other so-called sacred texts in existence. Yet, there is something about how God is presented in the Bible that sets it apart from everything else. The Bible doesn’t try to convince us to accept a God who is distant and unknowable. On the contrary, it invites us to know God intimately and to encounter his reality for ourselves.

This week’s Haftarah is special for the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah (this year, starting Friday evening, September 11). It was likely chosen to parallel the special holiday Torah reading that speaks of the miraculous birth of Abraham and Sarah’s son, Isaac. The Haftarah speaks of another special birth, that of the prophet to be, Shmuel/Samuel. In both cases, the mothers-to-be were unable to conceive. Channah/Hannah, Shmuel’s mother, was desperate for a child—a desperation she took to God. We might miss how profound her request was. She performed no complex ritual nor pronounced some elaborate incantation. Rather, from an honest but hurting heart, she cried out to the invisible creator God, who, since he had made the universe and had given her ancestor Sarah a child in her old age, could certainly give her, another barren woman, a child. And he did.

When Channah fulfilled her promise to God by dedicating Shmuel to his service, she broke out in an exuberant song, proclaiming her understanding of God. What makes her song special is that it emerged from a reality that, until that moment, had been hypothetical. It’s not that she didn’t know God before. Obviously she did, or else she would not have prayed as she did. But God’s provision of a son confirmed what she already believed, thus allowing her to walk in God’s reality at a much deeper level.

God doesn’t expect us to only know him theoretically. That which we know about him in theory is meant to be responded to. His reality is meant to be proven through lives willing to take him at his word. We may not be as desperate as Channah was, but as we earnestly pursue him, we will find him. Channah is but one example of people just like us, whom God is inviting to experience his reality as she did.

At this, the beginning of another year, we have an opportunity to see whether our understanding of God is merely theoretical or a proven reality. The Bible claims that God wants to be real in our lives. We are not expected to pretend, get hyped up, or be content in our confusion and emptiness. On the contrary, there is a reality beyond our wildest dreams waiting for us to take hold of, if we are willing to let it take hold of us.

All scriptures, English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible