Emet Inspire - Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan - Pirkei Avot

[Music] Welcome back to this week's Emmed Inspire. There's a statement in Perk Avod. Everyone whom the spirit of his fellow man is at ease has the spirit of God at ease with him. That means if you want to know is Hashem happy with you, all you need to look at is are people happy with you? And that is a good gauge. If people are upset at you, if people are disappointed, if people are hurt by you, God forbid, then it's likely that Hashem is not happy with you. Even if you do all the mitzvot between you and God, but if you don't treat God's children with respect, then Hashem is not happy with you. However, there is one time when this is not precise and that is when your uh opponent has negative character traits. That means let's say someone is by nature a negative person and then he looks at you in a negative way as well. And now you see that he's not happy with you. Does it mean that God is not happy with you? No. If you look at a negative person, don't feel bad. It's not about you. That means that we have to be careful when we look at people. We have to keep in mind that their self-esteem is based on how others treat them. If we smile at them, they will think that they are a good person. They will think that God loves them. If we frown at them, they will think that they are at fault. That somehow they didn't do what they were supposed to. So by our facial expression, we can actually lift someone up or lower them. Now if in reality that person is doing something bad then look at him without a smile. But otherwise we are obligated to smile at everyone. And that is another statement in greet every person with a beautiful countenance. Look at them and smile at them. Why? because you are encouraging them that you are doing well. We don't know how they're doing. So why should we judge them negatively and not smile? Instead, we are smiling by default at everyone because we are judging a everyone favorably. And in this week's para, we see Moshe struck the rock and was punished. And one of the commentators says that the reason he is punished not for striking the rock but rather because he got angry at the Jewish people. And Hashem said the Jews will look at you Moshe and they will think that God is angry at them. But that's not true. God loves them and he wants them to drink. They're thirsty. Hashem takes care of them. So don't be angry at someone at whom God is not angry. If you want to allow your temper to take over, ask yourself, would God get angry in this situation? And if God would not get angry, you have no right to get angry because then you are misrepresenting what God thinks about this person. A child broke a cup. Would God be angry at him? I don't think so. And that means you have to smile at the child, reassure them, help them out. When everything is cleaned up, then you can already instruct them how to handle precious vase better. So, let's smile at everyone and [Music]