by Shani, Dena and Daniella
Shira is having a tough morning. The babysitter canceled, carpool was late, and milk spilled all over the floor. Shira’s head is spinning; still, she whispers, “This is all for the best.” She quickly finds someone to watch the baby, gets the children out to school, and cleans up the spill. She has a meeting first thing in the morning, and now she is going to be late for work! She tries to pull herself together as she drives, thinking gam zu l’tova, while hitting one red light after another as the clock ticks on. By this point, Shira is flustered and preparing to quietly slip into the meeting. She finally pulls up to the entrance of her office building only to see it blocked off. A three-car accident had occurred just 15 minutes before! If not for the hectic morning and the red lights, she could have been involved in the accident and gotten seriously hurt! Stunned, she says out loud, “Baruch Hashem.”
Rochel, from Miami, is visiting New York
for a simcha and staying with her friend Sarah. It isn’t easy to watch another
friend get married while she is still languishing in shidduchim, but she decides to put her feelings aside and be mesameach (gladden) the chassan and
kallah. Rochel is supposed to leave Monday morning since she has a job
interview Monday afternoon, but all flights are cancelled because of unexpected
weather conditions in Florida. Rochel is trying to arrange a Zoom interview,
when Sarah invites her to a single’s event Monday night. Rochel tries to tell
Sarah that she really does not have the time to go with her, and besides, she
has nothing to wear. Sarah insists she come, and Rochel eventually agrees. Lo
and behold. Rochel meets her chassan at that event, and she now jokes that was
the best flight she ever missed!
* * *
These stories of hashhacha pratis are inspiring and clearly demonstrate the hand of
Hashem putting us in the right place at the right time. But we have to remember
that even if Shira had been plain old late and Rochel had not met her bashert because of a canceled flight,
they were still being guided by Hashem. We do not have to wait for the
punchline, the “big bang,” to see yad
Hashem. This is when our emunah
is truly challenged. When we aren’t privy to the full story, we need to trust
that the page we’re on is best for us.
When there is no great story to tell,
when things are not going our way, it is not hard to feel a sense of darkness. It
is at those times that we need to flex our emunah
to reach the light. Chanukah comes in winter, when it is cold and dark. And yet
we don’t use the eight days of Chanukah to justify or explain the darkness. We’re
not sitting around waiting for the big reveal of why the darkness is for our
benefit. Rather than allowing ourselves to be consumed with darkness, we fill our
homes with light – and not only that. We increase the light every day. Chanukah
is about clinging to the light – dveikus
b’Hashem – trusting that everything He
does is good, even when our plans go awry. It is precisely when we are feeling
hopeless that it is imperative to hold strong in our emunah and call out to Hashem. We must kindle the flame inside of
ourselves, however small, and hold on until the world around us looks a little
brighter, too.
The neis
(miracle) of Chanukah happened when the Jewish people found themselves in bleak
circumstances. Yet standing in the desecrated Beis Hamikdash, instead of
wallowing in despair, they searched for oil to light the menorah. The oil was
meant to last only one day, but that one action toward the light created eight
days of illumination. Believing gam zu l’tova,
this too is for the good, is enough. Having emunah
that we are in the right place at the right time creates an unimaginable amount
of light. Just as we thank Hashem for the green lights in life, we realize that
the red lights are from Him, too. It is what we do in those moments when things
seem good – and also when they don’t – that creates a space for dark or light.
Each moment that life is running smoothly
is a giant bracha, one that we may
only appreciate in its absence. The neis
of the oil lasting eight days was Hashem’s will – but so is the fact that we
can light a flame at all. Let’s use this Chanukah to appreciate all of the
light, all of Hashem’s brachos, and
let’s use the kochos (powers) that He
has given us to create more light and kindle more flames. May the glow of our
Chanukah lights remind us that the light is always within us, no matter the
darkness outside. And together, we can illuminate our world.
