New York City Marathon | Rabbi Fischel Schachter

So here I am, I'm going to visit an uncle of mine in a hospital in Manhattan. It's Sunday morning, and I get there, and I'm faced with the New York City Marathon. They're running across First Avenue, and I wanted to cross the street. And the police officer said: You can't cross now. I said: I have to visit my uncle in the hospital. You can't cross now. The marathon was just starting. The lead runners were coming through. I said: How long does this take? He said: A couple of hours. I said: What if someone has to get across the street? He said: The only thing I can tell you is you’ve got to run along with them. I said: I have to what? Well, you can't cross, you know, cutting them off, but if you kind of run along with them and change lanes, you can do it. Let me tell you something. The last thing in the world I thought I was going to do that day was run in the New York City Marathon, with my bekishe and my hat. All I need is to wind up on YouTube with somebody there. So I put on my gartel. I said: Ribono shel Olam, You want me to do this? I'm doing it. And I started to run, and I started, like, shifting lanes and running and running. I wasn't exactly in shape for this. And like five blocks later, I cross the street, till I got to the other side because I had to run very, on a diagonal, very, you know, short angle and I had to march back and it was a hot day. And I walked upstairs and I came into my uncle's room and my uncle was laughing his head off. He was standing in the hallway looking down and he saw the whole thing. And my son said he hadn't laughed in weeks. I said: You know something? The Ribono shel Olam knows where we are. And because he knows where we are, that means that the Nisyonos you have, you can deal with it. You know the story, this guy is in a comes out by a party and says: Listen, I want to make an exciting party. There's a crocodile in here. Whoever jumps into the pool and outswims the crocodile, 50,000 bucks right here and now. Who’s going to do it? All of a sudden, they hear a splash, and the crocodile is chasing. The crocodile gets his crocs, gets his socks. He makes it out of the other side. He says: Great! Here's the 50,000. What are you going to do with it? He said: I'm going to hire people to beat up that guy that pushed me in. That's what I'm going to do with it. להבדיל אלף אלפי הבדלות, the Ribono shel Olam didn’t push us in, but he put us into this world and he knows exactly where we are. And that's why to think for one moment that we can't deal with it, We can! You know, there are certain Aveiros that the Zohar says Teshuva doesn't help, especially when it comes to Inyanim of Kedushas Yesod. But the של”ה says there’s a higher level of Teshuva, a much higher level of Teshuva, that does work. Yeah, who could do that high level of Teshuva? Says the Satmer Rebbe in the Sefer Divrei Yoel, In this world we are faced with such unbelievable tests and Nisyonos, any move we make to try to accept the fact, I know, Ribono shel Olam, You put me here, and I know I can do it, to believe in that and make a move in that direction, that is the highest level of Teshuva possible.