Back to the Future

The Slonimer Rebbe once taught that: "If you want to know what you need to fix in this world, look at those areas that are hardest for you."
 
If you're like me, you'll probably identify about 86 areas you need to work on…
 
Rav Erez Moshe Doron frequently states that if we were perfect, we wouldn't be down here. Every single person who is down here has some serious work to do. If you want to know why the world feels so heavy and complicated and loaded these days, it's because we have unfinished business with literally thousands of people.
 
Even 'simple' interactions in the supermarket could (and probably are) paying off Divine debts, which is why these days, you have so many customers having heart-attacks and getting into fist-fights over the extra two cents they got asked to pay on their ketchup.
 
Recently, I found out that someone I'd agreed a contract with a few years' ago had double-crossed me. If I didn't believe in reincarnation, I'd be absolutely fuming, and probably wasting a huge amount of time and energy trying to sue them, or something. But Baruch Hashem, I do, and I believe that I owe them the amounts of money they've taken from a previous lifetime, and G-d is paying down the debt.
 
It all comes back to Rav Arush's three rules of emuna, namely:
 
1) Ein Od Milvado – there is only G-d, and G-d is doing everything
2) G-d is doing everything for a good reason
3) G-d is sending me a message
 
If I go the litigation / complaining route, then really, it's a lack of emuna. That doesn't mean I can't do it – we have courts of law for precisely these reasons – but it's certainly true that if I can let it go and see G-d's hand behind it all, I'll have a lot more peace of mind.
 
The Arizal teaches, as mentioned by Rav Arush in a number of places, that this generation is the generation of the Midbar – the desert wanderers – come back again.
 
If you want to know what's going on with us today, all we have to do is look what was going on with them. And what do we find?
 
* People who had lost most of their religious tradition in a foreign country (nearly everyone was a baal teshuva)
 
* People who were psychologically 'slaves'
 
* People who were obsessed with money (Golden Calf, anyone?)
 
* People who had to contend with the false Jews, aka Erev Rav
 
* People who lived 40 years in a desert
 
* People where the wives wanted Eretz Yisrael, and the husbands didn't
 
* People who had to deal with the Sin of the Spies (namely, an awful lot of evil speech and complaining)
 
* People who continually cried and complained and tested G-d, despite all the miracles He was constantly doing for them
 
* People who were constantly in danger from 'Amalek' (which has the same gematria as 'doubt', which is the opposite of emuna)
 
That's what's going on with us, today! It seems like such a big list of things that we need to fix, before we're really ready for Moshiach, but Rav Arush actually boils it all down to one big thing: a lack of emuna.
 
Applying the three rules of emuna to everything in our lives is the fastest and best way to get everything fixed, and of dealing with things in a stress-free, happy manner in the meantime.
 
The Arizal teaches that we have up to 1,000 times to get our souls fixed, and who knows where we're all standing, at this stage in the game? This could well be time 999 for a lot of us, and there's a lot riding on getting this lifetime 'right'. And how do we do that? We work on our emuna. That's all. That's it. That's everything.
 
I know it's hard, but remember what the Slonimer Rebbe said: the areas that are hard, are the areas that need work. Let's end with a quick 'emuna test', to see where you're holding:
 
Q: When you read about the person who swindled me, how did you react?
 
A: What a nerve! I'd hire the best lawyer and sue the pants off them so fast, I'd make their head spin
 
B: That's not very nice. I'd take them to Beit Din (Jewish Court of Law) and happily abide by whatever decision they handed down
 
C: G-d is good! It's only money, and I'm sure it saved you a lot of other heartache and issues, Rivka'le
 
If you answered A: you are clearly still finding the whole area of having emuna pretty hard.
 
If you answered B: you are getting there, but still need some work on seeing that everything G-d does is good.
 
If you answered C: let's be friends!! I like your emuna-outlook on life 😉