Do you know this situation in life when you weren‘t active, e.g. not nice and helping someone (for me often because of laziness or arrogance), leading to regret because it made you miss an opportunity and often reward – which was not foreseen, yet lost.
I want to write today about how important it is to fully be invested in life, meaning: ACTION be active whenever you get the opportunity to do a nice thing, even if it (actually especially) means that you have to give up part of yourself, wether it is some form of loss or even self-sacrifice.
To make my point let’s look at how we see this idea expressed in this weeks parasha.
Parashat Vaera tells of hashems revelation to the people through the plagues. Moses approaches pharaoh and asks him to release the Jews from the slavery which paraoh refuses to do hence the plagues.
After reading the midrash on this parasha I clearly established what My favourite one of all the plagues is: the frogs !! Read this :
Okay so this is the point: there were many frogs which were doing their thing, plagueing the egyptians. this is what i see as the default mode of our existence – so were the frogs simply existing according to their nature. Then we learn of some frogs that go above what their nature (of being annoying frogs) is – they go into the ovens of the egyptians so that their bread can’t properly bake, risking / sacrificing themselves, giving what is most precious – their lives. I know this sounds kind of crazy like I’m writing about frogs that crawl into ovens.. but I think one can definitely see how we can apply this to our own lives if we think and feel hard enough. When the plague ended, the frogs all died. except for… the frogs that exceeded themselves, striving to fulfill their purpose even more and intensely, doing more than enough – The frogs self- sacrifice led to hashem letting them live !
If get involved, going above ourselves to help others, we will end up being rewarded – sometimes revealed, sometimes not. Every opportunity we miss to serve our fellow human beings is a missed reward ! There is a saying that if we only open a hole as small as a needlehole, hashem will open up a massive hall for us. We see this with the frogs! This might sound very opportunistic, doing good things only for a reward, and while that shouldn’t be the driving force motivating us, it for sure adds an understanding of how the world works, making us rethink our decisions.
Basically: let’s help wherever we can and use every opportunity we have to give to hashem – and he should let us feel that it was worth it, just as the frogs that went above themselves lived, and the ones that didn’t died.
May we have the strength to bring hashem into our thought, speech and action, when it is easy but especially when it is hard.
Shabbat shalom