The Waiting Period

Living Emunah By Rabbi David Ashear

Living Emunah 2683 The Waiting Period One of the great ways the Ba'al Emunah serves Hashem is with his patience. Hashem promised Avraham He would give him Eretz Yisrael. Yet, when it came time to bury his wife there, he had to pay an enormous sum of money for the land. Hashem was so proud of Avraham for not questioning Him, not asking why he had to pay for the land that Hashem had already promised him. Avraham was also promised a child who would take over his legacy. Yet Avraham had to wait 30 years to see the fulfillment of that promise, and he never questioned Hashem even once about it. We learn a lot about how much Hashem appreciates our acts of self-sacrifice and how much blessing they bring down. However, because today we live in a generation where everything comes instantly, it has become much harder for us to have patience and to wait to see the blessings come after we perform heroic deeds. This just means that the rewards for us waiting today are astronomically greater. A person who has done a great act to bring honor to Hashem and has not seen the yeshu'ah he was hoping for has an opportunity today to earn infinite merits by staying patient and trusting that Hashem will help him at the proper time and that his deed will bring down a great amount of blessing. It is true that our deeds bring blessing, but it doesn't necessarily come right away. Rachel Imenu performed one of the greatest deeds in all of history by giving over the signs to her sister Leah. She was willing to give up her husband-to-be to her sister to save her from shame. Chazal tell us that Rachel was physically incapable of having children and that it was in the zechut of this act of self-sacrifice which gave her the merit to have children. Yet, she still had to wait 14 years from that time to have her first child. We see from here that, just because she did the deed that merited her salvation, it didn't mean she was going to get it right away. Similarly, Chazal tell us that because of Yosef's ability to resist the temptations of Potiphar's wife, he became the second in command over the entire country of Egypt. It was his being in that position that enabled him to save his family from the hunger and bring them down to Mitzrayim with dignity. Yet, what happened after he heroically overcame his inclination and did the will of Hashem? He was thrown in jail. Not only that, he had to stay there for 12 long years before he finally came out.The act he did was tremendous. It earned him the title of Tzaddik. But he didn't see an immediate salvation from it. The same is true in many situations. People may be told by holy rabbis about different things they can do as a zechut for salvation. They listen to the rabbis and they sacrifice so much to do what the rabbi recommended. But they don't see any results from it. This does not mean that the deed didn't produce a yeshu'ah. It could very well be that because of what they did, they will get the salvation they're looking for. It just may not come right away. It could possibly take even years. Our job is to have patience and trust in Hashem. He will reward everything we do if we maintain our emunah during the waiting period. We will become so great from it, especially today when waiting is so difficult.