Nothing Wasted
Parshas Acharei Mos
Posted
on May 2, 2024 (5784) By Rabbi Naftali Reich | Series: Legacy | Level: Beginner
Nothing is lost. Nothing is wasted.
This is what Hashem was
telling Aaron by way of consolation for the death of his two sons.
“With this” shall Aaron enter the sanctuary. With the fiery
zeal of his two sons, which would now be channeled to their proper destination
through the Yom Kippur service performed by their father. Through his actions,
Aaron could tune in to the spiritual energy generated by his sons and harness
it to add momentum to his own service. In this way, he could bring fulfillment
to the lives of his sons and solace to his own broken heart.
A young dissident was sentenced to fifteen years of hard
labor in a prison camp. Each day he would push a long pole attached to a gear
that turned a heavy millstone in the next room. Day in and day out for fifteen
years, from dawn until long after dark, the prisoner pushed the pole in an
endless circles of backbreaking labor.
When he was finally released, he asked to see the
millstone, and his wish was granted. The room turned out to be dark and musty,
covered with cobwebs and many inches of dust. The former prisoner took one look
and burst into tears.
“Why are you crying?” asked the puzzled warden.
“All these years, I had thought I was grinding grain, that
I was helping make bread. But now I see that all that terrible hardship was a
total waste. That is simply too much to bear.”
In our own lives, we often expend energy on all sorts of
good deeds without seeing any tangible results. For instance, we put tremendous
efforts into our children, and sometimes we become frustrated, thinking it is
all for naught. But it is not. We can all take comfort in the knowledge that no
good deed or good word is ever wasted, that somewhere, sometime, in one way or
another, our efforts all bear fruit…
Text Copyright © 2008 by Rabbi Naftali Reich and Torah.org.
Rabbi Reich is on the faculty of the Ohr Somayach Tanenbaum
Education Center.
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