Part 126: Persevering with Hashem

good morning good morning I want to thank our sponsors first of all the sponsors for the amuna series for the year Ai and Dr Ai and Bella Morgan laishas Rabbi Dr Brian gab whose continues to inspire us each and every day also want to thank today's particular sponsors Ronda shival and loving memory of her mother Irene schaer and Ronda is actually not here this morning she's an amazing woman and she is helping a friend who is sick and we wish a toam Bas air today's is also sponsored by sum on her sixth year site her should have an alah okay we are still in a righteous person finds life through Amun if we have amuna we're alive and if we're living without amuna if we think that we're in charge we're in control then we forfeit and concede our own life because our life instead of being filled with Tranquility peace and calm no matter what's happening in it is filled with anger and envy and arrogance so so we've been going through the four elements within a human being which are wind water Earth and fire we talked about the fact that when we have a bad habit a bad quality it's a symptom that's a rash in one part of the body you could eat keep putting cream on the rash or you can go to the source of the rash the virus and only if you heal the virus will the rash ultimately go away otherwise you get rid of the rash on the arm it comes on the other arm and so on so therefore the bad uh qualities that we exhibit really are reflective of a virus of a corruption within the system and we need to heal one of these four elements which are out of whack so fire when our sense of fire the fire in our belly our enthusiasm our fire when it's misdirected or misguided it comes out as arrogance and anger when the wind within us wind is that power of speech we produce With the Wind with a voice box so then Lush and Hara and gossip and so on so we've been up to to offer that sense of Earth within us the earthliness within us when it is out of whack when it is imbalanced then it expresses itself we began this last time in the form of sadness and despair and despondency and therefore procrastination and laziness if a person's sense of Earth whatever that means wherever the Earth is within us then we wake up feeling lethargic and tired and dragging we feel dark and sad and giving up hope but of course that's not the life of a Jew we spoke about Shalom if you've given up it's because you're not thinking if you're thinking clearly you know that there's always hope and there's always a possibility and whatever you're going through is for a reason Hashem is all powerful and all capable so let's start again from the second paragraph page P everyone see where we are there's another reason that people give up the reason that people are despondent and they become hopeless we like to think of ourselves as righteous you know we are amazing amazing amazing at giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt even when we can't give it to others There's an actual phenomenon there's a psychological phenomenon about this I forgot what it's called I spoke about it once in aussa where you know if you leave your phone on in daving it's because an emergency might come in but someone else kind of nudnick and fool and Ice leaves their phone on when you come late it's because there was a reason an excuse and it's understandable it's not only understandable and excusable it was righteous that you came late because you were doing something uh entirely righteous someone else comes late and they were reject and a loser and they can't come on time and they can't get their life together there's a phenomenon I forgot what the psychological phenomenon is called but in our own thinking we know we can be down ourselves we'll always rationalize our Behavior we'll always give ourselves the benefit of the doubt will always be down like for us but when it comes to others we actually jump to the opposite instead of giving the person the benefit of the doubt we actually immediately jump to the opposite within them opposite within them so what he says here is that sometimes the person thinks of themselves as a sadic you know we like to think of ourselves nobody wants to walk around thinking I'm a terrible person I do terrible things I'm totally incapable so we think we're righteous and then what happens we do something unrighteous so then we say so our arrogance makes us not want to admit that we've made a mistake the arrogance blocks us says one of the greatest challenges to marriage is when a couple when a each side digs in and doubles down and even when they know they're wrong it's true in Friendship it's true in parenting it's true in in uh work but arrogance gets in the way of saying you know what you have a point I didn't need to say it like that I shouldn't have done that or you know what your way of looking at it you right I can see that I'm sorry but we double down because we don't want to admit we're ever wrong what would it say about me if I'm ever wrong what would it say about me if I'm ever imperfect what would it say about me if I can't do everything exactly right when a person's faith is strong if you live with a sense of faith if everywhere you are Hashem is with you if you see Hashem and everything that you do and everything that happens and everything that occurs so it's never about you it's not about you you the world doesn't revolve around you and whether you are perfect or imperfect fallible or infallible the world's not about you being in control the world's not about you taking credit the world's not about you and your ego if everywhere you go and everything you do and everything that happens to you instead it's all about Hashem so you'll never give up hope and you'll never despair the reason you despair is because you're so self-absorbed evaluating is it about me and do I deserve it and can I and will I come through and am I good enough and I'm too good and I'm so great and everything I do is great so some people fail loving themselves too much and other people fail they love themselves way too little has famously said you have to love your neighbor as yourself it means that the prerequisite to loving your neighbor is you first have to love yourself you can't love your neighbor as yourself if you don't know how to love yourself so some people are very M on that mitvah some people they indulge themselves they love themselves they spoil themselves they're very very good at they have to love themselves a little bit less and other people have to love themselves a little bit more people who feel invisible and inconsequential and unworthy and they don't matter people who feel incapable they can't never do it they will never achieve they'll never they have no aspiration because of it have to love themselves a little bit more of writes we have a Mitzvah of believing in hem but he says we also have a Mitzvah of believing in ourselves because if there's aim if there's a peace of God in every one of us then why should we believe in ourselves why should I believe in me the answer is if I don't believe in me then I'm not believing in God because I am an expression of God so to to not believe in myself I can conquer that Temptation I can conquer that behavior I can conquer that past episode I can conquer that anxiety of the unknown I can conquer that Envy or that arrogance I can do it and if I don't believe I can then I don't believe that I'm a piece of God so denying my own self is denying godliness so if I live with amuna I don't have y I don't have despair I don't havep respond y I never give up hope Despair and sadness it's so sad says Raa when you meet people they've just given up they've given up they've just given up this I meant to be poor I'm meant to be unhappy I meant to be alone I meant to be childless I meant to be and I don't mean to say that anything that you want to be you can be that's just simply foolish I think I told you last I'm not going to dunk a basketball it's not going to happen not that that's the most important thing in the world but I'm finally accepting it that I'm not going to dunk a basketball a great so it's not that whatever we want to do you can do but it means that you have to believe in yourself a person is a person who has great faith doesn't get lost by anything that happens to them so this was a failure so I flopped so I told you Ben Franklin it wasn't that he failed 2,000 times before he overed the light bulb he he succeeded once it just had 2,000 steps so it's all a question of how you look at your failures are our failures and our flops because we are incompetent and incapable or are they just steps on a journey towards success but if we have faith in Hashem then we know that the end is the journey toward success you know that will always be there to comfort you and hm will lift you from that fall when you need it the most to dip into that well that Reservoir to be able to withdraw from that bank account of Amun it's only there to withdraw if you spent your life making deposits but if now that you need to make a big withdrawal a big withdrawal you know as as a as a rabbi I'm often involved or I'm there immediately after someone gets some very bad news loss of a loved one or themselves a diagnosis and um a person right then needs desperately support they need to have encouragement they need to have faith they need to have something to latch on to and lift them so if you worked out the amuna muscle your whole life now your muscles are strong to be able to withstand what you need but if you didn't ever work it out and you're going to be winded by the thing that hits you in the face then you're going to fall over so you say what do I need amuna for why do I have to go to the amuna why do I have to work on my amuna why do I have to read and think about these things my life is good I'm healthy have a good parnasa have a nice family life is good the amuna that's for the neb the amuna that's for the people who neb are struggling and suffering and confronting challenges me I don't have to go to theun Sure life is good prise we don't ever know when we're going to become the next neb we don't know when we're going to God forbid God forbid God forbid encounter something so we need to work on strength our core so that God forbid that time comes and we're ready to go and maybe I told the story in here not for several years of um we used to have a happy minion on Friday night we still have it we used to to be every Friday night we used to call it the carak minion the Happy minion and we used to have it every Friday night so there was a member of our who had a big heart attack when I went to visit him in the in the hospital he said to me do you know that the K saved my life I said that's amazing you know you were giving up Faith but the singing and the dancing and the clopping and the bouncing off the walls and the happiness and the joy it saved your life when you were ready to give up because no no no no no it literally saved my life I said what are you talking about he said every Friday night got together and that cabala shabas was amazing we sang and we danced and we jumped and we bounced and we and I was out of shape and I'd come home wounded and everyone else was bopping and bouncing and having the G time and I couldn't keep up and I felt so bad because I wanted to tap into that energy of that beautiful ding so I started to work out and I lost a few pounds so that I could be part of the kak minion and the doctor said that if I had not lost those few pounds and gotten in a little better shape this heart attack would have killed me it was the fact that I got in a little better shape that made me ready for this heart attack so that minion saved my life what an amazing story right an amazing way of looking at things so the point is that amuna will save our life it's almost not a question of if it's a question of when we will all encounter something I've yet to meet someone who's figured out how to live forever or have the people around them live forever so it's a question of when but we will all encounter and confront mortality and challenge will our amuna muscles be strong will we be ready can we dip into that Reservoir will the bank account be so robust we can make a withdrawal without going into the red we have to know that everything's from hem it is all from okay this is what we're up to we have to put our trust in Hashem in every difficult moment and in every dark place and to know in truth that Hashem is the one who comes and that our Salvation can come it can come in the blink of an eye also we should always maintain hope Y is Shalom despair giving up hope that's not a Jewish value a Jewish trait my friends where would our people be if we gave up hope every time we were expelled every time they tried to exterminate us every time we were forced into Exile every time we were denied or deprived at the end of every pum if we ever paused and looked at the situation and became hopeless we would never be here today we are only here a nation of survivors because because of Hope because of Hope because we never ever give up hope we recognize is in our life and everything is for a reason and that he's going to maybe In Our Lifetime show to us maybe it'll take much longer than our lifetime to see it but everything is for a reason in every dark place in every difficult place this week's yob is running away from his brother and if you look at it we get the benefit of knowing the end of the the story who was telling me RAB Blum recently was he told me he studied with uh when he used to do ncsy when he lived up north he studied with a public school kid and he learned the AA story with him and the kid didn't know how it ended and you learn the story of the AA with someone who doesn't know how it ends that's a whole other way of learning the AA story doesn't know how it ends didn't see the end of the movie so we have the benefit we read Torah every year and since we're little kids we heard the stories most of us so we know that we have the benefit of knowing how it ends but look at it through Yakov he has no idea how this is going to end all he knows he's the he's the favorite son of his mother who has the benefit and the pleasure of living in the tent and growing in isos learning Torah impurity and the next thing you know his mother makes him dress up and he's a fraud he's pretending to be something he's not and he's stealing from his brother now his brother literally wants to kill him and he's running on the road on the way with his brother in Pursuit and his whole life is turned upside down what happened to and what happened to his b medish what happened to his kusas what happened to his mother's love and affection and protection and now how does this guy how does he know how to operate in the world to be able to sustain himself and maintain his life and maybe his brother's going to catch up or maybe his brother's going to kill him and what does he Institute for us he introduces Mar his grandfather gave us shakas because his grandfather was all about the beginning of the day poer the light when there's Clarity when there's hope when there's optimism when there's a bright new day day and gave us means a gift explain you know the G says is the most treasured of all three of Theos kak you could time the beginning of your day and you're filled with hope and optimism and Mar is at the end of the day when you've retired for the day but smack inconvenient just asked my wife always inconvenient in the middle of the day I said how could it always be inconvenient sometimes it's 5 o' and sometimes it's 8:00 how could it always be equally inconvenient so she says it is and then she discovered the antidote the woman's answer to Is nursing you got to put the kids to bed I have to nurse you know what she says she says it's no wonder that Yakov introduced Mar 12 kids to give bath to and to put to bed Yakov said sorry I gotta go to Marv anyway so Yakov introduces Marv why Yakov introduces Marv because Marv represents the night and yakov's life is defined by the darkness of night the uncertainty the doubt the danger of night the cloak of night that's yov we say it's so good to praise you and to thank you and to see you in our lives how do we do it in the morning I could talk about your I woke up and what a beautiful day what a day day it's going to be I could talk all about the of a great new day but at night to talk about you at night means I have to tap into amuna because as soon as I get to the cloak of the darkness of night I start remembering all the problems and the challenges and the uncertainty I remember all the pain and I remember everything introduces us so and in a DI of Challenge and darkness we have to dip into that Reservoir because when a person gets close to challenging times and fears from their own sins so you can't reconcile fear and hope if we're humble and not arrogant and if we don't beat ourselves to up too much about our mistakes of the past and if we always hope hold out hope about the future yesterday in the para class we talked about not holding on to the past but living for the future the the vision yov left G he left the world thinking about how bad I've been in the past and he hung out with he found God he and that's where he decided to dwell he didn't dwell in the past he set up camp to dwell in the future you could be a person who's stuck in the past you could live your life where you beat yourself up about the fast or you could be defined by your yet Unwritten future that your Best Is Yet To Come that the next chapter is going to be your best chapter yet that no matter what you've been through no matter what's happened to you no matter what's been in your past the best is going the future is going to be your your very best so if you focus on the of it will lift you and you'll be able to confront absolutely anything so maybe you look at people with hope and you say what a fool such na such a fool a sophisticated person who understands the ways of the world would never be so naive to have such hope you have to ask yourself who's the sophisticated and who's the naive fool really really if you have hope if you have a moon in then you always live with hope because he's all capable and there's nothing that stands in his way so I want to tell you after we finished learning last week I went I was on my computer and I came across the following story I think it was Mish right after last week said munish and I set it aside to share with you this morning because it so relates to what we just said and I want to tell you it's a beautiful illustration but I disagree with one with one aspect of it the governor of Texas Greg Abbott Greg Abbott is 62 years old in 1984 he was left paralyzed from the waist down after a freak accident he was going for a jog in Houston and a tree fell on him and paralyzed him from the waist down and he's been paralyzed living in a wheelchair ever since so last week he tweeted uh video he had come across of a young man in a wheelchair who was climbing an indoor wall you ever see indoor climbing places so in his wheelchair he's climbing the indoor wall with his arms and he reposted that video the governor and he wrote quote never quit never give up overcome any challenge so you know if you're a public personality the truth is if you're any personality and you're online there's always going to be trolls and haters who you try to say a nice thing you put up a nice video they're going to find a reason it's always a reflection of their own unhappiness despair negativity never ever absorb it the haters and the trolls and the losers never ever ever absorb it in fact what you have to try to do is not read the comments ever bro was giving me that on chabas I post things on a lot of different platforms and forums and I can't help it it's a big TAA to read the comments you want to see what people are saying but inevitably invariably there's always the haters in the comments they found that you missed a comma and you no comma so the whole piece you wrote what's the point of the peace on gratitude because you had no comma or what whatever they decide they're going to pick on or disagree about or they don't like fun so he too he posts this inspirational video and a person replies quote so great to see but if I ever end up in a wheelchair I'm just ending it so listen to what the governor wrote back it's a sitting Governor 62 years old he's been paralyzed since 1984 he writes back quote that's what I thought before I ended up in a wheelchair but I've done more after the accident that left me paralyzed than before that accident With God all things are possible oh my God is that amazing I read that tweet I've done more after the accident than I did before With God all things are possible so it's not over yet because you think the haters and the trolls disappeared you think they felt defeated they double down so someone wrote back God put you in the wheelchair Greg my God With God all things are possible and you've done more after who do you think put you in the wheelchair God put you in the wheelchair so listen to what the governor Greg Abbott wrote back God didn't cause the accident that left me paralyzed but he did help me preser persevere over that enormous challenge I'm a testament that the glory of God is revealed by a young man's back being broken in half and still rising up to be the governor of Texas With God all is possible so I don't worry I kept going but oh my God I I loved I loved his tweets I was very very NPO I was very inspired and moved by his tweets I disagree with his statement God didn't cause the accident that left me paralyzed theologically I understand it's very challenging don't worry I didn't tweet him back my thoughts but I understand it's theologically very very very challenging in fancy philosophy language it's called theodicy why do bad things happen to good people why does evil happen in this world so if a tree limb fell and it left you paralyzed was that gravity was that nature was that God was that the wind was that you that you ran under a dilapidated tree was it your free will you took a risk running under that tree was it nature was it gravity was it God all the above none of the above this is beyond my pay grade this is a very very very difficult question bad bad things happen to good people it seems the better your person you are the worst things are happening to you these days very painful I don't have to tell many of you in this room who've encountered and endured and persevered over it yourselves um we give a shabash once where we tried to examine these issues of Free Will and determinism and nature versus God and it's not clearcut what I'll tell you is this this is the Amun but I'm not going to get into it right now what I will tell you is this anyone who simplifies it doesn't know what they're talking about so if you want to say it's all God you know what you're talking about if you want to say none of it's God you don't know what you're talking about when you start to learn and you start to learn the ra and you start to learn the our real M on these issues you realize it's really complicated and complex it's very very nuanced I spoke about this past shabas I'm writing it as my article this week we're living in a time of superficial and binary this or that everything is simple but the world is not simple it's complex and it's nuanced and it's complicated and it's difficult and the same is true with this because the ran for example says you receive is directly proportional to theun you live with so that means to say for the r this is not a commentary on the governor right now but it means to say that at least for the rambam's point of view for the Ram's point of view if you live life without God if you say to God thanks God I'm good without you then God says oh you've got it you're good without me you don't need me no problem I'll direct my attention elsewhere and now you are exposed to the elements so whereas if you lived with a faith and a trust and a determination in Hashem and you're jogging in the park and a tree is about to fall over maybe Hashem will intervene on your behalf because you've invited him in your life you've invited him you're you're practicing vacas you're clinging to him so he's on the jog with you and he sees the tree starting to fall and he pushes you out of the way or he holds up the tree for one more second but the Rah says that if you've told God I don't need you on the jog I'm good you stay back I'm good I'm going jogging on my own I don't need you if you live life without God and the tree it's ready to fall because the nature and gravity and the age of the tree and the brittleness of the branch predetermined that that that was the moment the tree was supposed to fall then it's going to fall on you and that's not God that's because you chose to live without God and now you became exposed to the elements so if you're is spinning right now mine is too I'm just telling you it's complicated the ra talks about General Providence versus Pro prus specific Providence and it's not so P oh look at the time it's not so P it's not so simple at Allman's R's opinion is it's very simple everything's from Hashem absolutely everything has nothing to do with you in fact the the the the cabalists were so Disturbed with the rambam's point of view about these issues that they said that the rambam was reincarnated as a worm cuz the rambam said that animal world only has Claus and only the human world has that the animal kingdom has General Universal Providence and only humankind has specific individualized Providence so the reaction to the ram saying that was that the ram some great Masters literally wrote that the ram was reincarnated as an animal to have to realize how wrong how wrong he was it's complicated it's very very complicated so disagree with Greg Abbott's assertion God didn't cause the accident maybe he did maybe he didn't I don't know I'm not ready to say he didn't I i' like to live my life believing that everything is from Hashem but it's the that's the saer of the of the braa it's the second half of the Tweet sa of the tweet that I like he did help me persevere over that enormous challenge I'm a testament that the glory of God is revealed by a young man's back being broken in half and still rising up to be the governor of Texas With God all is possible Right what he's saying is I found a way to persevere not by saying I'm paralyzed there's no God woe is me but would help me find that way to persevere and endure and to Aspire and to climb and to achieve my dreams is because I never let go of God that With God all is possible so all the work that we have to do is not when the crisis comes but it's the preparation before the crisis it's stocking up with amuna before the crisis so we have what to dip into let's just do one more paragraph so says you know what's the great motivator that makes you jump out of bed in the morning I'm grateful to you am I God that you woke me up that you restored my life and you know you wiggle your fingers and you wiggle your toes you wiggle your nose and you open your eyes you say it's all working it's all still working it's unbelievable it's all still working another day you've renewed my contract your faith in me is great that you've brought me back who am I to be lazy and procrastinate if someone you admire someone of greatness Taps you with a mission with a charge with a mandate I don't know who that person is that you admire there's a great Rabbi personality there's a great sadus there's a great uh the person who was your Mentor in your professional life there's a great family member your Zeda calls you your Bubby calls you and they say I need you to do this for me would you be like yeah I'll get to it when I'm done on the couch the person who you admire that person who's great asks you to do something you jump up and you're excited and you go do it because you want to fulfill that responsibility so mod an is a great person tapping you and saying I need you to do something for me I need you to leave lead your best life yet I need you to do something for me you have a mission that no one else in the world can do and if you sleep in and snooze again if you lie on the couch and if you're lazy and if you procrastinate and you push it off then no one else on the planet Earth can do what I need you to do so says is US waking up with a sense that Hashem is asking us to do something he's tapping us and saying I need you to come through who can lie in bed who could be lazy and procrastinate when you get that phone call when you're living with a a living breathing Dynamic animated Amun it's going to bring you to have an A of and to love him so if you live with auna and you feel Hashem is everywhere then what you feel is Hashem has a unique life for me to live he's got a mission there are things for me to do who's going to be lazy and who's going to procrastinate who's going to delay if there's so much for us to do so the antidote to laziness and the antidote to Despair and hopelessness is to increase and to work out that Amun of muscles is to be learning what we're learning and to be davening and to be talking to hem and to be developing that relationship and to be inv in in that relationship and when we do the byproduct the I would say intended consequence it's not an unintended consequence is that we feel it so much more in all these other areas of our life now Governor Abbott is still paralyzed even though he loves God and he endured believing in God and God lifting us up doesn't take away the hard it doesn't bring back the people that we've lost and it doesn't take away the pain sometimes chronic physical pain people are going through and it doesn't heal the emotional pain that can never ever be healed believing in Hashem doesn't create an endurance that can replace what was gone but it gives us the capacity to despite it persevere and continue on the path of greatness to continue to be to live a life of joy to live a life of drive to live a life of Happiness even with what we went through because Hashem is the one who's lifting us up with hasem will continue next week