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Daily Chizuk #1245
Weekly Parasha
Kiddush Hashem: Bringing Glory Through Daily Actions
Ignore the Odds
There are many situations in which people have great needs but the odds of them getting what they need are extraordinarily low. The natural feelings in those situations would be to despair of getting help. It could be a doctor giving a patient a negative report, it could be a specialist telling a couple they most probably will never have children, it could be a financial analyst telling a person his business will never succeed, and the list goes on. What is the proper attitude a person is supposed to have when facing those bleak scenarios? The pasuk says in parashat Shoftim, כי תצא למלחמה על אויבך וראית סוס ורכב עם רב ממך, לא תירא מהם. The pasuk there is speaking about the Jewish People going to fight a war and it says, if they saw a nation much larger and stronger than them charging towards them, they were not allowed to be afraid. And the pasuk concludes with the reason, כי ה' אלוקיך עמך, המעלך מארץ מצרים– because they had Hashem on their side. The same Hashem who obliterated the entire Egypt, the greatest superpower at the time.
So it comes out that whenever a person is facing these types of situations, he should know, he has a mitzvah from the Torah to ignore the odds and feel confident in the salvation of Hashem. He should continue making the normal hishtadlut and he should pray to Hashem and know that to Hashem there is never such a thing as odds.
There are many situations in which people have great needs but the odds of them getting what they need are extraordinarily low. The natural feelings in those situations would be to despair of getting help. It could be a doctor giving a patient a negative report, it could be a specialist telling a couple they most probably will never have children, it could be a financial analyst telling a person his business will never succeed, and the list goes on. What is the proper attitude a person is supposed to have when facing those bleak scenarios? The pasuk says in parashat Shoftim, כי תצא למלחמה על אויבך וראית סוס ורכב עם רב ממך, לא תירא מהם. The pasuk there is speaking about the Jewish People going to fight a war and it says, if they saw a nation much larger and stronger than them charging towards them, they were not allowed to be afraid. And the pasuk concludes with the reason, כי ה' אלוקיך עמך, המעלך מארץ מצרים– because they had Hashem on their side. The same Hashem who obliterated the entire Egypt, the greatest superpower at the time.
So it comes out that whenever a person is facing these types of situations, he should know, he has a mitzvah from the Torah to ignore the odds and feel confident in the salvation of Hashem. He should continue making the normal hishtadlut and he should pray to Hashem and know that to Hashem there is never such a thing as odds.
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