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I’m wondering if someone could help me feel more simcha for the Yom Tov and the miracle of Yetzias Mitrayim. When I think of being thankful to Hashem for rescuing us from Mitzrayim, I then think of Hashem who put us there in the first place, where we were then tortured for many years by the Egyptians. Obviously, the Nes of Yetzias Mitzrayim is very important to Judiasm; its mentioned every day in davening; every Shabbos by Kiddush; we have a whole holiday dedicated to it!! So what am I missing? I want to appreciate the Yom Tov and feel grateful and thankful to Hashem for what He did for us; yet I find myself lacking.
Thank you.
The short answer:
The apparently maniacal and cruel person breaks someone’s bone after strapping them down to a table and rendering them helpless, makes deep disfiguring cuts through the skin, fat, and muscle, tears away critical ligaments and tendons, chops off sections of bone, cuts blood vessels and causes a great deal of bleeding.
Then he sews the tendons on to a new location, sews together all the cuts, stops the bleeding, puts dressings and salves on the wound, gives medicine to heal, and to relieve the pain, comes and visits every day to see what he can do to help, and to bring good cheer.
When you have become a new person, who can get out of the wheelchair for the first time in your life, are you grateful to the doctor?
The.nurse, there are some deeper issues here and I think you’ll benefit a lot from having an IRL rebbetzin/someone to bounce things off of. Meanwhile the moderator spoke quite well. I would also try to get hold of a beautiful book called Dual Discovery. It won’t answer your questions necessarily but will enhance your yom tov.
Nurse,
Just to make your case stronger, how could you ever thank God for healing you from a sickness when He was the one who caused you to be sick? How could you properly thank Him for saving you from a dangerous situation when He was the one who put you there in the first place? How could you thank God for any good fortune you have when He caused the bad fortune that preceded it?
The bottom line lies in the fact that you don’t see the entirety of God’s “books.” He has his chesbonos about what is good and what is bad. Perhaps you “needed” the illness that He gave you for some reason — to teach you a lesson, to provide you with an opportunity for personal growth, to inspire you to work towards a cure for your illness, or even just to help yo atone for some previous sins. The same could be said for any “misfortune” that you suffer.
If you define God as One who is good and One who provides good, then, in the end, all that happens is for your benefit. Yes, you may not see it and, admittedly, there are circumstances where it may be impossible for us mortal humans to comprehend how a misfortune is good; but in the end, if you work with the above definition, then it has to be good. Perhaps that is why we are commanded to bless God for the bad as well as the good.
Being the tech geek that I am, I like to think of God sitting there with a giant Excel spreadsheet* with which He governs the world. We, however, only have a view of a few cells on the spreadsheet. Sadly, the results that we see are based on variables that are in cells on His spreadsheet that we cannot see. As a result, something that seems bad may, in fact, be good.
The Wolf
* I’m not sure which is more blasphemous — the idea that God uses computers or that He would use a Microsoft product. 🙂
(Of course I don’t believe that God uses computers… it’s just a metaphor!)
“I guess I just have to…keep repeating that concept” – which is why good people say the sheish zechiros and ani maamin every day; you’re in good company 😉
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