Yom Kippur: It’s Not Hopeless

Living Emunah By Rabbi David Ashear

Living Emunah 2649 Yom Kippur: It's Not Hopeless The pasuk says, דרשו ה' בהימצאו, קראוהו בהיותו קרוב . We are to take advantage of the times that Hashem is closest to us. And right now, on Erev Yom Kippur, He is extremely close. We need to utilize this time to make teshuva and accept upon ourselves to improve our ways. There are people who want to be better, but the environment that they're in is stopping them. There are people who have relatives that have veered from the path, and they would do anything to get them back. To them it seems hopeless, but they must strengthen themselves and recognize that with Hashem nothing is ever hopeless. The Tanah de'Veliyahu teaches us that Hashem yearns for His beloved children to come back to Him more than a woman yearns for her husband to come back from a long journey. Hashem wants our relatives back more than we do. And we can help with our tefilot. A woman related that after her divorce she had to split the time she has with her daughter with her ex-husband. While she was growing in religion at a rapid pace, her ex-husband was going in the opposite direction. It was very confusing to her daughter to go back and forth to these different environments. The woman was so worried about her daughter every time she left the house to go to her father. This year specifically a change happened in scheduling. The daughter was going to go to her father every single Shabbat, while she would be by her mother during the week. The problem was the man doesn't keep Shabbat, and this was causing the woman so much stress and anxiety. He doesn't attend shul. There are no rabbis in the picture who he's connected to. To the woman this situation seemed hopeless. Every day she has a hotline reading the book A Daily Dose of Pesukei Bitachon . And one morning a few days before Rosh Hashanah they were discussing the pasuk which basically means there is nothing stopping Hashem from bringing salvation no matter what the salvation may be. This pasuk gave her so much strength and amazingly that same night she saw with her own eyes how Hashem could bring a yeshuah in the blink of an eye. The community in which her ex-husband lives decided to bring in a speaker from another city to give chizuk for Rosh Hashanah. Her daughter enjoys listening to that speaker very much, so she asked her father if she could go. He didn't want her to go by herself, so he said he would bring her. He went and became very inspired from the class and Bezrat Hashem will continue to grow going forward. The fact that this speaker ended up in that community on that night was an amazing story in itself. Hashem is ready and waiting to help us but we have to call out to Him first. Another story happened a couple of weeks ago. A woman was walking on Shabbat and lo alenu was struck by a car. As she was lying on the ground, the driver got out to see if she was okay. He then said out loud, "I knew Hashem was going to punish me for driving on Shabbat." The woman on the floor heard this man saying he is a Jew who desecrates Shabbat. In her weakened state she said to him, "If you will accept upon yourself right now to keep Shabbat, I will forgive you for this." The man accepted. We see a couple of lessons from this story. Number one, look at the purity of this woman. While she was suffering in pain, she was concerned that the driver who hit her should keep Shabbat. Number two, it was decreed for whatever reason that this woman had to get hit, but Hashem orchestrated it in a way where it would be this man, to give him a chance to come back to religion. Even somebody who has drifted so far that he was driving on Shabbat right in the heart of a Jewish community, Hashem yearned for him to come back. If someone has no connection to rabbis or Torah, we would think how is he going to get inspired, but Hashem always has a way, ways that we could never dream of. Now is the greatest time for us to ask Hashem for help with our own Teshuvah and to help bring back those people who we know have veered from the path. Gemar Chatima Tovah