Renewing avodah and rising above nature

לך לך מארצך.

"Go forth from your land."

Hashem's command to Avraham to leave his homeland is the model for every person's avodah: to set out and keep moving forward.

כי אדם נקרא מהלך וצריך לעולם לילך ממדריגה למדריגה ולצאת מן ההרגל והטבע ואפילו כשזוכין לאיזה מדריגה בעבודת הבורא ית' מ"מ גם בזה ההרגל נעשה טבע שני.

For a person is called a "goer" (one who walks), and he must always travel from level to level and break out of habit and nature; and even when one attains some madreigah (level) in the avodah of the Creator, nevertheless even in that, habit becomes a second nature.

A human being is never meant to stand still — unlike the angels who are "standers," he is a "goer." The danger is that even genuine spiritual achievement can harden into routine, becoming a fixed "second nature" that dulls the original aliveness of the avodah.

ולכן צריכין בכל עת לחדש דרכים בעבודת ה' בנפשו.

Therefore one must constantly renew the pathways of avodas Hashem within his soul.

The remedy for routine is hischadshus (renewal): one must keep finding fresh approaches in serving Hashem so the avodah stays living rather than mechanical.

ואברהם אבינו ע"ה נתנסה עשרה נסיונות ובכל נסיון נעשה כבריה חדשה עד שזכה לצאת מכל הטבע כמ"ש החכמה תעוז כו' מעשרה שליטים כו'.

And Avraham Avinu was tested with ten trials, and in each trial he became like a new creation, until he merited to break free of all of nature — as it is written: "Wisdom strengthens... more than ten rulers..." (Koheles 7:19).

Each of Avraham's ten nisyonos (trials) remade him into a "new creation," lifting him stage by stage above the constraints of nature. The Sefas Emes links this to the chochmah (wisdom) of the verse that overpowers the "ten rulers."

שלעולם יש שליטה מכח הטבע להפוך הכל אל הטבע לבד מאותן החכמים שנתעלו על הכל כמ"ש ז"ל שלשה לא שלט בהם יצה"ר ג' אבות:

For there is always a dominion from the power of nature, drawing everything back into mere nature — except for those wise ones who rose above it all, as Chazal said: "Three the yetzer hara did not rule over — the three Avos."

Nature constantly exerts a pull to flatten everything into the ordinary and the habitual. Only those who, like the Avos, rise above nature through chochmah escape this grip — and so Chazal teach that the yetzer hara had no dominion over the three Avos.

Summary: A person is a "goer," obligated to keep climbing from level to level and to renew his avodah constantly, lest habit harden into second nature. Avraham embodied this: through ten trials he became a "new creation" again and again, until — like all the Avos — he rose above the gravitational pull of nature and the yetzer hara entirely.