A post from yesterday reminded me of this....
We are preparing for the Seventh Day of Pesach and the splitting of the sea. We know that the Jews sang to Hashem the famous "Shiras Ha-yam". It begins אז ישיר - Then they will sing. The obvious question that bothered many is why the Jews employ the future tense [there is so much unemployment today I guess any type of employment is good] and not the past tense אז שר?
Explains the Master of Mussar Reb Simcha Zissel of Kelm: When someone makes a simcha and you ask him if he thinks he will ALWAYS be so happy he would honestly answer "No". Who knows what the future will bring??! But if someone has true, intense, deep, profound, unshakable faith in Hashem then the person can honestly answer "Yes, I will ALWAYS be this happy".
The Torah says ויאמינו בשם ובמשה עבדו אז ישיר - They believed in Hashem and Moshe His servant. Then they will sing..... At the splitting of the sea when the Jews reached such an exalted state of faith they could sing אז ישיר in the future tense. They will ALWAYS sing! That is the power of Emunah. Faith is a tremndous source of joy and solace regardless of the external circumstances. KNOWING that everything is happening for the good is sooo sweet.
I think that this was best expressed by Rebbe Nachman of Breslev [Likkutei Moharan Torah Dalet] כשאדם יודע שכל מאורעותיו הן לטובתו, זאת הבחינה היא מעין עולם הבא - When a person knows that everything that happens is for the best, such a perspective is blissful like the world to come.
Beloved friends - Emunah is the hardest mitzva in the Torah because every other mitzva we can see or touch. Hashem is not visible to the human eye and beyond all the senses. Faith sometimes flies in the face of what we are feeling. Sometimes - oftentimes - life hurts. At those moments we must believe that it is all PERFECT. Everything is from a Loving Father loves us more than we can ever imagine. That is what we were commanded to believe in Aushwitz and what we must believe when seeing a sweet, angelic child sick with cancer. That is a tremendously difficult level to reach but that is Emunah.
That is our avoda on the Seventh Day of Pesach. To increase our faith in Hashem and reach the level of מעין עולם הבא knowing that EVERYTHING - divorces, broken engagements, illness, poverty, bumper to bumper traffic, pimples, income tax - EVERYTHING, is for the best.
I hope we can get there .... together!
Then we will always sing
Love and blessings:-)
