Shortly after we moved here we purchased a new car. It seems that this is the neighborhood of leasers but we knew right away that since we had made the commitment to ourselves that we would be going back and forth to Montreal to visit our daughter Naama we would be unable to restrict ourselves to the limited amount of mileage yearly which is involved in leasing a car. At this point, after having the car for 1.5 years, we have 34,000 miles on our odometer.
Although driving is tedious, we were thinking i the past two weeks as we drove to Rochester and then on to Montreal to bring Naama for her annual Simchat Torah “vacation” and then back again to Montreal, that the trip enabled us to share the wonderment of Hashem’s nissim. The breathtaking colors of the foliage along the way is as picture perfect as it can ever be. Many times we would just say “Wow,” this is so gorgeous especially with the sun shining down. How could we not feel a heavenly presence through such an experience. It is indeed a wake-up call that we are surrounded by holiness.
At the same time we reminisced about the many times that we drove through horrible storms–snow blocking our sight with little idea of where the road began and ended. It was truly a miracle that we were able to weather the roads each time although we definitely had a few very close calls. We saw many cars that had fallen into ditches and we ourselves swerved several times on black ice, luckily without major damage or injury.
Are these horrible stormy encounters also the work of Hashem? At the time we certainly did not see any beauty in what was occurring. Many times we sat in our dining room in Montreal and looked out at our back deck where even the swings that normally swung in the air were totally embedded in snow. We would also occasionally find the tracks of some poor animal that was probably out there looking for food. As the snowflakes came down and we were inside, we would again marvel at the beauty of nature.
How are we able to understand the magnificent beauty of autumn, the destructive power of snowstorms, the raging winds of a tsunami–all works of our God? What are we being told here?
Similarly, visiting the birthing floor of a hospital and joining in the excitement of a new arrival while just one or two floors away in the same building tragedies are occurring. Are we able to understand this at all? No, obviously we are not. Our role in life is to appreciate the wonderment and at the same time to be pained by the heartbreak. It was never meant that we should be able to figure out the decisions of Hashem but rather that we should continue to strive to be the best people that we can be in every situation and to carry on.
By Rabbi Mordechai and Nina Glick
