A Conversation with Yael Eckstein – IFCJ President on Staying Present in the Moment

Yael Eckstein, IFCJ President, and CEO oversees all ministry programs and serves as the international spokesperson for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

 

Before her present duties, Yael served as Global Executive Vice President, Senior Vice President, and Director of Program Development and Ministry Outreach. Based in Israel with her husband and their four children, Yael is a published writer and a respected social services professional.

 

Yael Eckstein has contributed to The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, and other publications, and is the author of three books: Generation to Generation: Passing on a Legacy of Faith to Our Children, Holy Land Reflections: A Collection of Inspirational Insights from Israel, and Spiritual Cooking with Yael. In addition, her insights into life in Israel, the Jewish faith, and Jewish-Christian relations can be heard on The Fellowship’s radio program, Holy Land Moments, which airs five times per week on over 1,500 radio stations around the world.

 

Yael Eckstein has partnered with other global organizations, appeared on national television, and visited with the U.S. and world leaders on issues of shared concern. She has been a featured guest on CBN’s The 700 Club with Gordon Robertson and she served on a Religious Liberty Panel on Capitol Hill in May 2015 in Washington, D.C., discussing religious persecution in the Middle East. Her influence as one of the young leaders in Israel has been recognized with her inclusion in The Jerusalem Post’s 50 Most Influential Jews of 2020 and The Algemeiner’s Jewish 100 of 2019, and she was featured as the cover story of Nashim (Women) magazine in May 2015.

 

Born in Evanston, Illinois, outside of Chicago, and well-educated at both American and Israeli institutions – including biblical studies at Torat Chesed Seminary in Israel, Jewish and sociology studies at Queens College in New York, and additional study at Hebrew University in Jerusalem – Yael Eckstein has also been a Hebrew and Jewish Studies teacher in the United States.

 

Do you ever have trouble staying connected to the present moment?

 

These days there are so many things keeping us busy and distracted, whether it’s social media or the daily demands of life. It’s easy to lose our connection to the present moment, but when our minds are always anywhere, we can miss out on the beauty, the people, and the miracles that are all around us. We’re going to talk about how we can slow down and connect to the present moment and why it’s so important for us to do that if we want to have a relationship with God. We’ll explore the biblical story of Moses and the burning bush and discover why the moment we are in right now is the key to unlocking our best lives.

 

How does the story of Moses and the burning bush teach us to slow down?

 

The verses that I’m focusing on today tell us about the day in Moses’ life that changed everything. It was the day that he saw a burning bush and received a mission from God to free the children of Israel from Egyptian slavery. The verses are Exodus:3:1-4 and they say, “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There an angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up.

 

So Moses thought I will go over and see this strange sight; why does the bush not burn? When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called on him from within the bush, “Moses, Moses”, and Moses said, “Here I am.”

 

That was the beginning of the conversation that transformed Moses from an Egyptian outcast to the savior of Israel. According to Jewish tradition, Moses wasn’t the first person to see the burning bush. There had been other people, probably shepherds just like him, who walked by that very same bush, but Moses was the first person to stop and go over to check it.

 

It’s possible that the other people who passed by the burning bush didn’t notice it because they were too busy rushing by or too preoccupied with the thoughts in their heads or maybe some people did notice the bush, but decided to ignore it. Maybe they didn’t want to deal with it and figured someone else would take care of the fire or maybe they were just too busy to take the time to see what was going on. Either way, Moses was the only person to notice the burning bush, to stop, to go over to it and as a result, he was the one who encountered God. 

 

Moses was present in his life. His mind wasn’t wandering all over the place and he wasn’t rushing to get somewhere else. He was able to appreciate an extraordinary phenomenon and he was willing to step out of his usual routine to follow what was important at that moment. And because of this, Moses had an encounter with God, an encounter that changed his life and all of history. This teaching is so powerful and it’s so relevant to me and probably to most people in this modern world. It reminds us how important it is to be present in our own lives. We’d all like to think that if we pass by the burning bush, that we would have stopped and gone over to it just like Moses, but would we have? Are you sure you would’ve even noticed it? And if you did, would you have stopped your day, your busy day with your checklists and places to be, to walk over and see what was going on?

 

Do you believe that most people are out of touch with the present moment because they are too consumed with their daily lives?

 

Yes. I once read about how we often miss the most extraordinary things, which are right before our eyes. One Friday morning in a busy subway station in Washington, DC, a man played his violin for 45 minutes. Over a thousand people passed by as he played, but only a three-year-old and six adults stopped to listen. Everyone else rushed by. At the end of the session, the musician had collected $32. Here’s what the commuters didn’t know. The violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world, and on that busy Friday morning, he played one of the most complicated pieces, and just a few days earlier, he played for an audience where the average ticket sold for a hundred dollars.

 

Joshua Bell agreed to play in the subway that morning as part of a social experiment about perception and priorities. He would play exceptional music in an ordinary place at a busy hour. The question was, would people notice? The results of the experiment revealed that “no,” most people did not notice something extraordinary at a busy time in an ordinary place. People were blinded by their schedules and daily demands. They simply couldn’t see the exceptional beauty right in front of them, which leads to another question. If people could miss such unmistakable talent right before their eyes, what else could we be missing in life? How much are we missing because we don’t have the time or the willingness to see and hear what’s all around us? Are we missing out on inspiration, relationships, and joy? And is it possible that we could even be missing out on God? We live in a society that pushes productivity, that encourages us to work and work and work and accomplish and do every moment of our lives.

 

Even our children are encouraged to take on more and more extracurricular activities leading to even more hectic family schedules and less time to just be with one another, with ourselves in our lives. But we need to remember that sometimes the most productive thing that we can do is simply to slow down, to do less, and to be more. We are human beings, not human doings. And if we get caught up in doing things all the time, we won’t have time to just be, to experience the beauty of our lives, to connect with God, and to see what’s going on around us.

 

How can we practice slowing down and being present?

 

I have a friend who once told me that she tries to spend a moment every day looking up at the sky. She said, “I know I’m too busy when a whole day goes by. And I haven’t looked up at the sky. I don’t know if the clouds are wispy or fluffy, dark or light, or if there are no clouds at all.” Her words made an impression on me. It made me realize that if we don’t have the time to simply look up at the sky and notice the beauty and changing godliness on display every day, how can we expect to notice God’s presence in our lives? That’s why I always try to pay attention to the sky.

 

How can we experience God in our daily lives?

 

In ancient times, a Jewish prophet was referred to as an adult child. A prophet had the maturity and intelligence of an adult but also the wonder and open heart of a child. That sense of wonder and awe is what allowed a prophet to experience God. And if we want to experience God in our own lives, we need to slow down enough to allow our own sense of childlike wonder to shine through, to open our hearts so that we notice the beauty and miracles and messages all around us instead of rushing right by them.

 

But I also know from firsthand experience that sometimes even though we try not to overschedule and we try to make time for the things that matter most, sometimes we’re just very busy, but even in our busiest times, we can learn to be present, to be mindful and to be open to God’s messages.

 

There is a beautiful teaching from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief Rabbi of modern Israel about finding God in the present moment. Rabbi Kook quotes Proverbs:3:6, which says, “In all your ways, acknowledge him.” He explained that this verse teaches us that we come to know God through whatever it is we are called to do at this very moment.

 

So we can know God even in the ordinary moments each day?

 

We serve God in many different ways. Sometimes it’s through prayer, other times it’s through an act of kindness, and other times it’s by being our best at work. We can come to know God in all these ways. Rabbi Kook explained that if our job is to wash dishes at this very moment, we should embrace it because that’s where we will find God. If an opportunity to do kindness appears at this moment, we should jump at it because that is how we will connect with God. God has never found in thinking about the future or the past or wishing we were doing something else. God is always found in the present moment, in opportunities to serve him right now.

 

So the key to knowing God is staying present?

 

If we want to know God, we have to stay in the moment connected to the present time. In Jewish observance, mastering the ability to stay connected to the present moment is something that we practice every day. You might have already heard me talk about how Jews say a lot of blessings every day. There are blessings that we say in the morning that thank God for things we might otherwise take for granted, including the ability to see, to have clothing, to have strength, to stand up straight, and even just for waking up to another day. Then there are the blessings we say on our food every time we eat.

 

Each type of food has its own unique blessing. For example, when we eat fruit, we thank God for the fruit of the tree. And when we eat vegetables, we thank God for the fruit of the land. And then there is a blessing we say every time we use the bathroom, thanking God for a healthy body. There are also special blessings for when we see or experience the wonder of nature. For example, we see lightning, thunder, rainbows, even smell a delicious spice or see the ocean for the first time in a long time, there is a blessing for every one of those experiences.

 

In the past, I talked about how this practice helps us maintain a grateful heart, but another benefit of saying these blessings all day on every experience is that it keeps us present and mindful of what we are experiencing. It keeps us awake so that we don’t miss out on the beauty of life or the presence of God. Saying these blessings forces us to slow down even for a moment so that we can become fully aware of what is happening in our lives, aware of our blessings, of our connection to God, and to the messages that he might be sending to us.

 

How do you recommend that everyone slow down to experience God?

 

As a wife, a mother of four children, and the CEO of a large organization, I know how easy it is to get lost, our minds racing to the future, to our worries, and our to-do lists, or we might find ourselves distracted by the things we didn’t get done yesterday, or by something else that happened in the past. But life happens in the present moment. God is in the present moment and the more we can connect to the moment we are in right now, the more we will encounter God in our lives.

 

In Psalms:118:24 we read, “This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.” This verse reminds us that we need to approach each day as though it is the most important day of our lives. We need to celebrate each day and stay fully connected to the time we are in right now. This week, take some time to consider ways that you can stay mindful, present, and attentive to God’s messages at all times. Can you slow down by scheduling moments to pray and rest throughout your day? Can you take extra care to notice your surroundings; the sky, the people, and the beauty all around you? Can you look at your familiar surroundings with fresh eyes and discover something new? Or maybe you can use your meal times as moments to slow down, appreciate your blessings, and connect to God. God is right here, right now in exactly what we’re doing. And if we pay attention, keep a sense of wonder, and celebrate the moment we are in, we will see Him, hear Him and feel His unending love all times, just like Moses.