Just before turning back, his mission unfulfilled, we read in the Torah, “a certain man found Joseph and behold he was wandering in a field.” That man asked Joseph a two-word question, ma t’vakesh, “What are you seeking?

….this great short question, ma t’vakesh, was not a question about the location of his brothers, but a question about the location of his life. And what happened to Joseph in the fields happens to us in our lives. We meet angels and they change everything. The man who met Joseph in the fields was of course not a man, he was an angel, or to say it more precisely, he was not only a man he was also an angel. Judaism has always taught that it is quite possible to be both at the same time.

In Hebrew, the word for angel is malach, which means “messenger,” and so for Judaism any person with a message from God is a malach, an angel. When we are about to lose our way it seems to me absolutely obvious and unarguably true that God will send someone into the fields of our lives to ask us, ma t’vakesh, “What are you looking for?”

Marc Gellman, What are You Looking For?