With this sedra, we come to the end of Sefer Shmot. Whereas the Book of Bereisheet is about outstanding personalities - from Adam and Chava to the Avot and Imahot to Paro and Yosef - Shmot is all about the nation, the community, the collective persona of Am Yisrael.
And so, Shmot dealt with the fundamentals of peoplehood: leadership, laws, courts, the military and, finally, the spiritual center of religious practice - the Mishkan.
When Moshe descended from Mt. Sinai with the second set of Luchot - by tradition, on Yom Kippur, 10 Tishrei - HaShem instructed him to start building the Mishkan. The construction lasted - miraculously - only three months (finishing in mid-Tevet), but the official dedication of the Mishkan was held only on Rosh Chodesh Nisan, almost 90 days later. Chazal say G-d wanted the Mishkan dedicated in the month Yitzchak was born, as a reward for his willing participation in the Akeida, at the site of the future Beit HaMikdash.
Why did G-d cause the Mishkan to be finished so quickly, if the dedication ceremony would only be held three months later?
But this raises a question: Why did G-d cause the Mishkan to be finished so quickly, if the dedication ceremony would only be held three months later? Why not let the building go on naturally until the 1st of Nisan?
The Be'er Yosef has a fascinating answer. The Mishkan, he says, was to a great extent an atonement for the sin of the Golden Calf (that's one reason why the description of the Mishkan both precedes and follows the account of the Egel HaZahav). And how did that sin occur? When Bnei Yisrael thought Moshe was not coming back from Mt. Sinai, they panicked. Aharon told them to be patient, to wait a bit longer, but they could not control themselves. They were thrown into a frenzy and insisted on making the calf.
Aha! That is why, as part of their atonement process, they were told to wait three months to dedicate the Mishkan. To learn the value of patience; to keep discipline. By waiting until G-d ordered the consecration, and keeping our own emotions in check, we demonstrated that we had learned our lesson, and had spiritually matured since sinning earlier.
And that lesson is something we all need to learn, right here, right now. Yes, we are concerned for our future, worried about our leadership, anxious about our direction. But we cannot and must not panic; we must have faith in our destiny as a great, immortal nation, and we must have faith in HaShem, who never, ever lets us down.
We need to take large doses of just what the Divine Doctor - and every other doctor - prescribed: patience!