You're drowning. You're drowning in a never ending current of frightening thoughts, worrying whether you'll be able to take care of your family and provide for your loved ones. Even when you find the time to visit the park with you’re family you're mind is wondering, even while opening a prayer book in the synagogue, the torrents of worry catch up with you. You have nowhere to hide.
Financial worries can be as destructive as the biblical flood. In fact, just like all of the Torah, every detail of the Torah’s description of the flood is relevant to the spiritual journey of a Jew. The flood is the financial worries that threaten to drown us all; the protective Ark is the words of Torah and prayer. Just as the floods water lifted the ark to great heights, the financial worries actually lift the prayer and study to a higher plane.
Spiritual sustenance is necessary not merely to satisfy your yearning soul, or to intellectually entertain by broadening the horizon of human experience. It’s the secret to survival in a challenging world. The spiritual haven is most appreciated when you realize that it is your protective shelter.
You see, before the flood the ark will sometimes feel confining. Even while praying and studying part of you lured toward the attractive world. When the world is flooded you realize that the ark is a source of peace, having spent time within it’s protective walls, having captured it’s tranquility, you can then bring it’s peacefulness along wherever you go.
Conventional wisdom leads a person to think that "I need to work extremely hard until I have enough money to buy piece of mind", that doesn't work. As the Ethics of Our Fathers teach: "one who adds money adds worry". The opposite is true, first you must find your ark, the protective and comforting words of Torah and prayer, only then can you be sure that when you have money it won’t rob you of your most important possession: piece of mind.
(Torah Or, Noach)
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1 comment:
I think you put it very well, I certainly have gone trough what you describe. And it is interesting because I think the way you put it sheds light on a lot of our life experiences. We only truly appreciate our Yeshivah experience once we have Tirdus HaParnasah. And then, not only do we appreciate it but it strengthens us as well and as you say lets us be carried to higher heights rather than drown in the floods of worry.
And perhaps it is not just Tirdus HaParnasah rather every day life struggles are also flood waters.
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