The Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, is somewhat different than the secular New Year. There’s no parties, no poppin’ bottles, no kisses at midnight.

Instead, there’s sitting in synagogue through hours of prayer, listening to the endless cries of a ram’s horn and reconsecrating God as our King.

For starting out a new year it seems pretty intense. Well, that’s because it is.

Over the course of the year we get in a bit of a stupor. Rosh Hashanah comes in and shakes us  up a little bit. This annual shake is not only directed at our relationship with God, but  romantic relationships as well.

When God created the world, nothing existed. God has no needs, so there was nothing really prompting Him to create.

Except a desire. A desire to connect and bond with us. But this isn’t always on our minds. We get caught up in the responsibilities of life and don’t really ponder the wonders of God or how the world is being sustained, miraculously, at every moment.  We just call it nature.

This is true of intimate relationships and marriage as well. In the beginning, there’s the desire to connect and it keeps couples tightly intertwined. Every moment feels extraordinary  and holds passion, intensity, and closeness.

But as the years mosey on, the bond feels more natural and usual, like it can just survive on its own. We grow accustomed to the miraculous.

But intimate relationships, like the world, are not sustained on their own, but with continuous input, attention, and love.

We take for granted just how miraculous a committed, intimate relationship really is. That two strangers can fuse into one, build a home, resist temptation and choose that same person every day.

The world too might seem like it’s just following a natural order, left to its own devices. But on Rosh Hashanah, we are reminded that it is God who at every second, is intentionally willing the world into existence and animating us, in order to be close to us.

Rosh Hashanah is where we come back to our essence, to our senses. Reminding us that in order to recrown God as our King, we must take notice that He is there, present, all the time. At the start of the year, we recommit to remember who God is, how much He loves us, and why He continues to sustain the world: to connect with us.

On the micro level of romantic relationships, the lesson is the same. Take notice of your partner and remember why you chose each other. Then recognize that closeness is something that must be constantly nurtured and fed, and like the world, does not survive on its own.

A couples relationship is its own world in itself. And like our relationship with God, sometimes it needs a good shake.