Caught in the Thicket | Rabbi Joey Haber

What are the top three tests of our generation? A little while ago, at my Shabbat table, I posed that question to my family, What are the top three Nisyonot challenges of our era? And everyone agreed the first one is technology. Everyone agreed on another one, which is our obsession with materialism. And the third one was up for debate. Is it Lashon Hara? Is it modesty? But I think the third one is the challenge of Vayimaen. The challenge of our head being all over the place and sort of caught up and comparing and looking in a million ways. And I want to share with you a powerful thought. The pasuk says that after עקידת יצחק, when Avraham Avinu was held back from slaughtering his son, Avraham Avinu picked up his eyes, and he saw he saw another ram that was caught in the thicket. What does that mean, ‘It was caught in the thicket’? The בעלי מוסר say: Here's what it means, What it means is that Avraham Avinu saw the next challenge, the next עקידת יצחק, so to speak. What is that next challenge? That next challenge is that our heads are caught in the thicket. The Nisayon of our generation is to have the ability to look away, to not get pulled in to all that our brain wants to pull us to, whether it's triggers inside of us and outside of us, all of that to pull away from it. the pasuk then says. בקרניו means that Hashem, when we're able to overcome that test, our face, our light shines up, just like Moshe Rabeinu was Our faces light up and our lives light up, if we have the power and the strength to pull our heads out of the thicket.