Seeing The World Through the Eyes of King David

There’s a special prayer Jews say throughout the Hebrew month of Elul—the 27th Psalm: “L’David Hashem ori v’ishi—Hashem is my light and my salvation. I fear?” In fact, it’s recited through Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and all the way until the end of Sukkot. Why?

I’d like to suggest that the Sages are inviting us to inhabit the consciousness of King David, the author of that psalm, and to experience how he saw the world and his relationship with God.

In the psalm, King David chronicles armies, wars, slander, lies, betrayal— enemies who want to “devour his flesh” and yet he only has one request: to contemplate the sweetness of God.

Most people would ask, “Why is God doing this to me?” But King David? All he’s thinking about is God’s goodness.

Before we try to understand King David’s mindset, first we need to ask an even more cosmic question.

Namely, “If there’s a God, why is the world so messed up?”

The answer is... because the world isn’t finished yet.

And that’s why God created us. To be partners with Him in bringing about the perfect world that He envisioned even before creation: a world without hatred, war, hunger or obstacles to serving Him.

And how do we complete the world? By facing life’s obstacles and overcoming them.

When we do that, the heavenly light inside us—our souls—shines into the world.

Now imagine when everyone does that—the whole world will be flooded with divine light, and God’s Oneness will be revealed.

King David knew all this. Therefore, the hardships he faced never contradicted the goodness of God.

King David never took life’s setbacks personally. He saw the sweetness of God all around him.

Consider this: God could have made the world in black and white, and we never would have known the difference.

Instead, God created every color imaginable including more than 40 different shades of magenta. And God didn’t just create fruit, He made kumquats! None of that had to exist.

These expressions of creativity are outpourings of God’s love. This is what King David meant when he wrote, “Taste and see that God is good.”

Behind the Peel

But let’s go deeper.

Every aspect of life has an “outside” and an “inside”. For instance, your body is the outside, and your soul is the inside. The world also has an outside and an inside.

The things that need fixing—the hardships—are the “outside”. But the essence of the world—the inside—is the ever-present, never changing, goodness of God.

Think of an orange. The essence is the fruit inside. The outside part is the peel you throw away. With this in mind, the Pischai Sharim, a Kabalistic encyclopedia of creation, says something wild: Since Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, we see the essence as disposable and the superficial as indispensable. In other words, we cling to the peel and toss the fruit. Everything is upside-down!

King David saw through the illusion. He possessed total clarity. That’s why he could fight wars, face lies, slander, and hatred—and still say, “All I want is to behold the sweetness of God.”

Just recently, the computer I’ve been working on imploded and I lost years’ worth of work. Without thinking I said, “God is good. The computer is my problem.” It was a King David moment — holding onto the inside, without getting derailed by the outside.

That’s the perspective of Elul. To walk into the New Year with total clarity and remembering that every challenge is an opportunity God customizes for us to perfect our souls and the world around us.