Let Hashem Decide

There's a young man, let's call him Alex, who is learning how to decipher G-d's messages, and who is acting on what G-d is trying to tell him. Recently, Alex and his wife went out and bought a new car, which was a big purchase for them. They agreed that Alex would use the car one day a week, and that his wife would have it the rest of the time. Alex could do most of what he needed to do very easily traveling by bus and train, but his wife was with the kids, or going shopping, and having the car would make a big difference in helping her to get her chores done more quickly.

Thursday was picked to be Alex's car day, but it started to happen that every single Thursday, his wife was asking him if she could have the car instead. The first week, Alex reluctantly agreed to let his wife have the car. By the second week already, Alex is starting to feel uncomfortable: she's asking him for the car again, but she's a reasonable person, and she knows Thursday is his car day. What's going on here? He tries to talk to his wife about it, and she offers to take him wherever he wants on Thursday, to drop him off and pick him up. But she still needs the car… Alex is finding it hard to agree. After all those years of no car, and now his one day to drive himself around, wherever he wants, without having to worry about anyone else's schedule or timetable. The freedom of the open road… Before they know it, this couple is having fights every single week about their car.

In the old days, this could have got very complicated, very quickly. Alex would be feeling very disgruntled about how unfair the whole situation is, but now, he goes to speak to G-d about it instead. "G-d, please let me understand what's going on here. I've read the Garden of Peace, and I'm remembering now that the world is a mirror, and that everything is a message from You. What are You trying to tell me through my wife? I know that she's the speaker system that's amplifying the message that you want me to get. What it is?"

As he's praying, he's slowing himself down, he's getting “present”, he's getting more and more truthful with G-d, and then he gets clarity: “give your wife the car on Thursday, and don't fight about it.” G-d doesn't tell him why it has to be that way, and it's really not obvious to Alex what's going on, but he accepts that G-d doesn't always tell us the secret behind why He's asking us to do certain things.

So Alex goes home, and he tells his wife: “you take the car.”

She says: “No, you take it!

He explains how he thought it over, talked to G-d about it in his personal prayer and says that he really wants her to have the car on Thursdays. Then, the thought strikes him that Thursday is actually the best day for him to be in the main office; it's the only day when all of the key players on his team are in the same place, and he can sit with them all on that one day, instead of chasing after everyone throughout the week, and he’ll get a lot more done. Wow! That's why G-d was making it so hard for him to get the car on Thursday. Alex tells his wife that she was a good messenger of the Divine Will for him, so that she wouldn't feel guilty, and they picked a different day for Alex to get the car.

There is so much for us to learn from this story. We see that when a person doesn't fight, when he backs off and accepts that everything is coming as a message from G-d, for his own good, then he makes himself into a vessel that can actually receive the message. Once we let go of what we think, and start acting according to the messages that G-d is sending us, then very quickly, He usually lets us see the underlying rationale. Why was there all the abrasiveness between Alex and his loving, reasonable wife every Thursday? Only because G-d wanted Alex to get a lot more done with his team on that day…

Instead of trying to fight against G-d's decisions, Alex is now working with G-d's Divine Providence, and acknowledging that G-d is running the world. When we act on the messages that G-d sends to each one of us in this way, we create a tremendous revelation of G-d's kingship in the world. When we recognize how intimately G-d is bringing about every aspect of our lives, we become a partner with G-d, and we reveal His glory in the world. That in turn brings tremendous blessings into our lives.