Recovering from a broken shoulder is a strange experience. There are moments, of course, when I’m not in pain. And there are moments of blessing, moments when I’m able to do something that I couldn’t do the day before. But mostly there is pain – an intense, continual ache that fills my body.

The Kabbalists taught that the pain in our lives is part of a larger pain – a sign of the brokenness that fills our world. The throbbing in my arm, the the shootings, and the racism, and the hatred towards women – all of them are expressions of the brokenness in God’s world.

The Kabbalists taught that at the moment of creation, God withdrew a part of himself, like a loving parent making room for his children. God put a part of himself inside a series of vessels. But at the last moment, the vessels shattered. And ever since, the world has been broken.

The shards – the remnants of those holy vessels – are all around us, hidden in the muck and mire of the world around us. They are hidden inside the doctor who treated me, in my wife who cares for me, in the friends who call me.

Every day, God calls out to us, asking us to lift up the shards, to reveal the sparks of holiness inside them. “Help me fix my broken world,” says God. “Love each other, care for each other, bring justice into the world. Everywhere that you find me, you can repair the world.”

As I type this, my arm is hurting. Living in a broken world isn’t easy. But the chance to be God’s partners, the chance to repair God’s world is what gives life its dignity. In the words of Rabbi Sacks:

We are here to make a difference, to mend the fractures of the world, a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as it takes to make it a place of justice and compassion, where the lonely are not alone, the poor are not without help; where the cry of the vulnerable is heeded and those who are wronged are heard.

There is no life without a task; no person without a talent; no place without a fragment of God’s light, waiting to be redeemed and discovered… It may take a lifetime to learn how to find these things, but once we learn, we realize in retrospect that all it took was the ability to listen. When God calls, he does not do so by way of universal imperatives. Instead, he whispers our name – and the greatest reply, the reply of Abraham is simply hineni, ‘Here I am’, ready to heed your call, to mend a fragment of your all-too-broken world.

May we all do our part in mending the fractures of the world.