The 5000% Discount

 Imagine you owe a million dollars to the bank. And you haven’t got it. Not only haven’t you got it, you have absolutely no way of getting it – and the bank has every right to foreclose, and throw the book at you.
 
Then, you get a call from the bank manager to come in and ‘discuss things’. Against your better judgement, you show up for the chat, and the bank manager offers you a deal: they are willing to give you a 5000% discount on your debt. All you have to do, to be completely clear of your debt once and for all, is to pay the bank $200.
 
Your jaw drops open. You can’t believe your ears. Then you run out into the street trying to find someone to buy your fancy gold watch for $200. OK, you like the watch, it was a present from your wife when times were better – but she’ll understand. It’s not like you’re losing the watch for nothing – you are selling it for the best possible reason! To finally be free of that horrible, crushing debt…
 
You run back to the bank manager, stuff the $200 into his hand, and wait with bated breath as he rubberstamps and signs the piece of paper stating you are now debt-free. You shake the bank manager’s hand, and thank him profusely. How kind! How amazing! How completely unexpected!
 
You get home, and your wife is ecstatic; she thought the next time she saw you would be on debtor’s row in the local prison. The watch? Ahh, who cares about the watch? It was so worth losing the watch in order to have a new start and a clean sheet. Everyone’s dancing around, everyone’s happy, the kids are on cloud nine…
 
I didn’t realise it until very recently, but this is how Hashem runs the world. Except until very recently, the only bit of the picture I could see was that I was being asked, repeatedly, to sell my prize gold watch.
 
And then, I listened to Rav Brody’s online lecture called ‘Tiny Tribulations’. In that lesson, Rav Brody explained how when Am Yisrael was on the cusp of entering the Holy Land, Hashem did yet another kindness for them, and ‘shortened the way’. It should have taken well over a week to travel the distance to the edge of Eretz Yisrael, but instead, it took three days.
 
OK, it was a very intense three days; it was three days ‘on the run’; three days without much time for a bubble bath, or a nice cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit – but travelling with all the kids and furniture is no fun anyway, so better it should take three days instead of nine.
 
(This is the part where the people were being asked to ‘sell the watch’.)
 
The people, of course, didn’t see their situation in that positive light. And when the meraglim (spies) came back with their poisonous ‘opinion’ of Eretz Yisrael, the people took the opportunity to vent their spleen, yet again, about the outrageous travelling conditions they’d been forced to endure over the last year.
 
No free melons! No free fish! Constant travelling! Constant Torah! Constant having to recognise Hashem in their lives (including when they met Him face-to-face at Sinai, when the Torah was given…) – and now, the cherry on the cake, being rushed to the edge of Israel, only to be told that the land ‘ate its inhabitants’, and was probably the most abnormal, and abnormally horrible place ten of the twelve spies had ever set eyes on.
 
You know the end of the story: Hashem finally lost patience with their ingratitude and carping, and condemned that generation to wander in the desert for 40 years, where they would all die off.
 
(As an interesting aside, in ‘The Gates of Gratitude’, Rav Arush writes that if Am Yisrael had accepted that decree with love, and not complained – it would have been immediately rescinded, and that generation would have all gone straight to Eretz Yisrael after all…)
 
So far so good. But the ‘new idea’ that Rav Brody explains in ‘Tiny Tribulations’, is that Am Yisrael really didn’t deserve to make ‘aliya’ at that point. The whole way along, they had moaned and complained and been ungrateful for all the amazing miracles and kindnesses that Hashem was constantly doing for them, and they had built up a very big spiritual ‘debt’ that needed to be paid off.
 
As we see later on, it was only paid off by 40 years of wandering in the desert. But Hashem had, initially, given them a 5000% discount on their debt, which was the ‘super-short’ three day trip to enter Eretz Yisrael.
 
Rav Brody explained that if Am Yisrael had happily and gratefully accepted the super-short three day journey, with all its difficulties, time stresses and logistical challenges – it would have saved them 40 years in the desert. In effect, they were getting a 5000% discount.
 
(There are 365 days in a year. 365 times 40 years = 14,600 days. 14,600 days divided by 3 (the super-discounted journey time) is: 4866.67. We’re amongst friends, so let’s round it up to 5000.)
 
Rav Brody explains it far better than I can, so go and listen to it, if you haven’t already. But this point, at least for me, was no less than life-changing. I suddenly understood that if I don’t moan about something that is objectively hard for me, and I thank Hashem for it – I’m getting a 5000% discount on what I should really be sent, to correct my soul.
 
So that horrible lip surgery was a 5000% discount on something much more horrible – Baruch Hashem! All the various coughs, colds, headaches and minor ailments are a 5000% discount on what I really deserve! Thanks, G-d.
 
That lost 50 shekel note is really saving me a quarter of a million shekels! Amazing.
 
But it only works if you believe it works. It only works if you take the ‘bank manager’ seriously when he makes the offer on behalf of his Patron.
 
And that, unfortunately, is where a lot of people come unstuck. They get the initial communication from the bank manager – and they figuratively toss it in the bin, as though it’s some sort of trick or joke.
 
‘Only an idiot would fall for that nonsense,’ they tell themselves, and then go back to trying to wrestle with the enormous, stressful problem that they simply can’t solve themselves.
 
So who are the ‘bank managers’? They are the tzadikim of our generation. The people who write books, and record shiurim, explaining the amazing offers that Hashem is prepared to make for his Chosen People, to free them from their crushing spiritual debts.
 
When Rav Arush writes in his book ‘In Forest Fields’ that an hour of hitbodedut a day is enough to sweeten all the harsh judgements hanging over me – even if I don’t say a word – I believe him.
 
When Rav Arush says that distributing 100 emuna CDs will lead to me seeing miracles in my own life, I believe him.
 
When Rav Arush explains that accepting a ‘tiny tribulation’ with love and gratitude could potentially save my life – and a whole load more trouble and strife – I believe him.
 
So many of us are ‘waiting for trouble’ these days. We know we have a big debt upstairs – even if we haven’t consciously recognised that fact – and we are constantly expecting to be called on it. On one level, we even recognise the ‘justice’ of the situation – we’ve done wrong and the wrong needs to be corrected.
 
Rav Arush – our spiritual bank manager – is personally writing to all of us, telling us that if we accept our tiny tribulations with love, we’ll get a 5000% discount on what we really ‘owe’ upstairs.
 
If we want to put an end to all the terrible ‘corrections’ we can all feel are hanging over us, all we have to do is believe him.