There is an old joke illustrating the difference between a believer and an atheist:
The believer wakes up, looks up to heaven, and with heartfelt devotion and true gratitude exclaims, “Good morning, G‑d!”
The atheist, by contrast, rolls over one last time, yawns and stretches, strolls over to the window, looks outside and declares, “My G‑d, what a morning!”
Believers know that our every waking moment is a gift from G‑d. They treasure the moments that He has planned for them, and express their gratitude with pride. Those with less faith take their moments as they come, and judge the quality of a day by the amount of pleasure they manage to wring out of it.
The first prayer a Jewish child is taught to recite every morning is the “Modeh Ani”:
“I offer thanks to You, living and eternal King, for You have restored my soul within me; Your faithfulness is great.”
We acknowledge our Creator and thank Him for the gift of a new day. By starting off the day full of humility and gratitude, we pledge to live up to G‑d’s vision for the world.
But, I ask you: once you’ve rolled off the bed and rubbed the sleep from your eyes, how much of the Modeh Ani do you take with you? So you spent eight seconds admitting that you owe your life to G‑d. Does that really affect the rest of the day?
The Torah advises us to “fulfill the utterances of our lips.” Ostensibly an injunction to pay up our pledges to charity and to live up to our vows, the verse can be homiletically rendered as a directive to listen and learn from the words said while praying. It is too easy to just go through the motions, letting the familiar words roll off the tongue and into oblivion; however, G‑d wants prayer to be more than mere lip service.
The words we say must mean something. Prayer is a unique opportunity to communicate with the divine. When we train our children to say the Modeh Ani first thing after rising, it is in the hope that the feelings and emotions encapsulated in the prayer will permeate the days of their life.
G‑d demands that we fulfill our pledges and live up to our promises. Each morning we acknowledge our Creator as King, and thank Him for gifting us with our soul again. We approach the rest of the day with the enthusiasm and knowledge that we are following the route suggested in G‑d’s guidebook. We will fulfill the oaths we made to Him, and live by our promises, for now and forever.
-adapted from www.chabad.org
