Nevertheless, don’t be glad that the spirits submit to you; be glad that your names have been recorded in heaven.”
It has been said: it is not what you know, it is who you know. One path to success is to be well connected. Typically the connotation of this is cynical as it refers to nepotism. I have learned to accept a modicum of nepotism. Why not help someone you know and care about if you can, right? This verse sort of reverses the spirit of that saying. The point of life is not what you have or what you can do, it is who you are connected to. Do you live and act for the sake of Heaven or have you bought into the ways of the flesh and of the world? Every year in the season of Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur, the concept of being “written in the book of life” comes into focus in Torah-minded circles. The idea is to be connected to the Most High. A season of repentance and forgiveness towards fellow believers leads to days of wishing friends and family that they be inscribed in the book of life, that they would be forgiven, that they would know The LORD and have a true, intimate relationship with Him. May the Almighty bless us all that we should have our names recorded in Heaven.
