Reflecting Hashem's Light | Rabbi Yossi Schwartz

A long, long time ago, lived a king who decided he's going to build for himself a beautiful palace. He hired the top contractors, the top designers. This was going to be a palace for the ages. But when it came to the throne room, this room had to be the most beautiful of all. And so, a search committee was sent out to find the top artists who were going to paint murals on the wall, and finally, they narrowed the search down to two of the top artists who the king met and said: Okay, You have a few months. I want one of you to take these two walls and the other to take the other two walls, and each of you together, you're going to create a masterpiece. And they got to work. And everyone noticed immediately that there was a difference between the two of them. One artist was there, first thing in the morning, with paint brushes and with paint and tools, and he was working hard from morning till evening. The second artist would show up a little bit late and as time went on, even later. Some days, he wouldn't even show up at all. Until that day came, the inauguration of the new palace. The king is so excited, all the subjects, everyone comes to the palace. They're standing there, waiting to be shown this beautiful room. And the king starts on one side of the room and a gasp goes out from him and from everyone. The walls are beautiful. Animals, you could almost touch the birds, you could see the fruits on the trees, you want to pick them off, they're so luscious, they're so lifelike. Amazing. And then the curtain is removed and the other side of the room is revealed. And now everyone is puzzled. That side of the room, he hasn't done anything. There's no paint. But what everyone realizes is that he had covered it with some kind of material that was reflective. And when you looked at the wall, you saw a reflection of the other wall, a replica of what the other artist had done. I'm going to pause for a moment, because this is quite a famous story, and most people have heard the story with a different ending than the original. That the king takes a bag of gold coins and gives it to the first artist, and he said: This is for your hard work. And then he turns to the second artist, who says: What about me, your Honor? And he points at the reflection of the gold coins in the mirror, and he says, There's your reward. But this story was written many hundreds of years ago, in the heiliger Sefer, the Akeidas Yitzchak, by R’ Yitzchak Arama, and he writes a different ending. He writes that the king not only found it pleasing what the second artist had done, but he rewarded him even greater than the first artist. And that's strange. Why would that be? R’ Nachman quotes this story, as well, and has the same ending. And I believe what these Tzaddikim are telling us is the following message. Every single one of us wants to be a Tzaddik. We want to be like the first artist. We want our life, we want our Neshama to be beautiful, to be shining, to be exactly the way it's supposed to be. But so often in life, things don't end up the way we want, and we find ourselves in places that we don't necessarily want to be. The Gemara tells us in Sukkah, Every single day, our Yetzer Hara overpowers us and without Hashem’s help, we would be unable to overcome the Yetzer Hara. Now that's very strange. Why does Hashem give us a Yetzer Hara that is stronger than us, that would overpower us? Isn't the point for us to choose, to have an equal fight? The Gemara gives us the answer. The Gemara says, You know why Hashem gave you a Yetzer Hara that’s so powerful? Because He wants you to turn to Him for help. And that's what this story is telling us, that even if we're not on the Madrega of a Tzaddik, but if we can reflect Hashem’s light in this world, if we can be מבטל ourselves to Him, and say: Hashem, I need Your help. I need Your help so much, because I see how much more powerful than me my Yetzer Hara is. It's not a mistake. It's so that we invite Hashem, we turn to Him, we invite Him into our lives, we reflect Him in our lives, and thereby, Hashem says, I'm going to shine a much more powerful light than you could ever have painted on your own. And that is, ultimately, incredibly pleasing in the King's eyes.