[Avodah] A Conversation With Hashem...

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 12:26:59AM +1100, SBA forwarded to Areivim
something he received:
: A Conversation With Hashem...

: Me (in a tizzy) : Hashem, can I ask you something?
: HASHEM: Sure.

: Me: Promise you won't get mad? 
: HASHEM: I promise.

: Me (frustrated): Why did you let so much stuff happen to me today?
: HASHEM: What do you mean?

: Me: Well I woke up late,
: HASHEM: Yes

: Me: My car took forever to start,
: HASHEM: Okay....

: Me (growling): At lunch, they made my sandwich wrong and I had to wait
: HASHEM: Hmmmm..

: Me: On the way home, my phone went dead, just as I picked up a call
: HASHEM: All right

: Me (loudly): And to top it all off, when I got home, I just wanted to soak
: my feet in my foot massager and relax, but it wouldn't work. Nothing went
: right today! Why did you do that?

: HASHEM: Well let me see..... the death angel was at your bed this morning
: and I had to send one of the other angels to battle him for your life. I let
: you sleep through that.
: Me (humbled): Oh...

: HASHEM: I didn't let your car start because there was a drunk driver on your
: route that might have hit you if you were on the road
: Me (ashamed): ............

: HASHEM: The first person who made your sandwich today was sick and I didn't
: want you to catch what they have, I knew you couldn't afford to miss work
: Me (embarrassed): Oh.....

: HASHEM: Your phone went dead because the person that was calling was going
: to give a false witness about what you said on that call, I didn't even let
: you talk to them so you would be covered
: Me (softly): I see Hashem

: HASHEM: Oh and that foot massager, it had a short that was going to throw
: out all of the power in your house tonight. I didn't think you wanted to be
: in the dark.
: Me: I'm sorry Hashem.

: HASHEM: Don't be sorry, just learn to trust me.........in all things, the
: good and the bad
: Me: I WILL trust you Hashem

: HASHEM: And don't doubt that my plan for your day is always better than your
: plan
: Me: I won't Hashem. And let me just tell you Hashem, thank you for
: everything today.

: HASHEM: You're welcome child. It was just another day being your Hashem and
: I love looking after my children.

But it teaches that obervance gives you the life you want to have. Not
that bitachon means trusting that you are getting the life Hashem Wants
you to have.

Aside from the very major problem of someone who does teshuvah and their
life drifts further from what they wanted. Like the case I repeatedly use
(a real story) of a woman who was the only grandchild on her mother's side
to marry a halachic Jew. The only one among her siblings and first cousins
on either side to turn her life around and become Orthodox. And of course
kiruv involved a lot of stories of the sort where the protagonist misses
his flight because he stopped to do a mitzvah, and the airplane crashes.

And then she loses a child. Also the only one in her family. A crisis
of faith only because she was taught to place faith in a notion of how
religion works that doesn't fit experience.

WADR to Chassidus and Novhardok (and the CI's "Emunah uBitachon" takes
exception to the Alter of N's conceptualization in particular), their
model of bitachon might make you feel good, but at the expense of buiding
your faith upon an unstable foundation.

Second, on a diet of this kind of story, how does one ever get to "shelo
al menas leqabel peras"? "Mitokh shelo lishmah ba lishmah" isn't likely
to include people who repeatedly take the trip back...

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
micha at aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter