The Satan’s Curve Ball

It seems that Sandy has been brought out of retirement and packed off to Eretz Yisrael for a short gig to officially end the drought that has plagued the country all too long now.

And although we are only mid way through the meteorological riff that is presently playing a few chords of Sandy throughout the length and breadth of Eretz Yisroel, we can already see the quicksand.

It’s all a test for the Eretz Yisraeldike Yidden and for those of us who are the Bnei Sandy.

From the perspective of those whose feet are firmly planted in Eretz HaKodesh the message could be as follows: Pay a little less attention to some of the low budget Mekubalim and other worthies who were wont to make what seemed like endless dire predictions and pronouncements in reference to the import of Meteorological Event Sandy and instead turn your attention to some serious Teshuva of your own.

On the other hand, they are free to see nothing but the rain, snow, and the sand storms.

The bigger test, however, is for the Bnei Sandy.

In EmunahSpeak: A Gut Rehab we said that In the ruins of Long Beach, Belle Harbor, Seagate, and Staten Island, to name but a few of the worst hit areas, Hashem has revealed to us where we go from here. The gut rehab that hundreds of us are doing to all or part of our houses is a moshol for the gut rehab we have to do to ourselves.

You have to become a different you, period.

And we don’t mean doing the Daf, writing a big check for disaster relief, or becoming a regular on the Shemiras HaLoshon Hot Line or at the Ohel Sara Amen Group.

We’re talking Tikkun HaMiddos here as the Mesillas Yesharim understands it. Simply put, in paralleling what we are doing to our houses we have to rip out our gaiva, taiva, kas, and kina and toss it into the dumpster with the sheet rock. 

This is what we have to do, and to that purpose we must stay focused with our eye on the ball so to speak.

Under no circumstances should we be redefining our experience in light of theirs by thinking even for so much as a nanosecond that if the weather can do cartwheels in Eretz Yisrael also, maybe there was no specific lesson to be learned from Sandy after all and that out gut rehab need not be so wrenching.

The Satan is setting us up for a high hanging curve ball.  

On its way to the plate we’ll (think we) see clear as day that the whole Sandy thing was over-hyped and that at the end of the day it wasn’t much more than a pretty bad storm that could happen to about anyone, as can be clearly seen from Sandy Lite now on stage in Eretz Yisrael.  And if that's what we see, we most definitely won’t see the necessity of the great Tikkun HaMiddos that we mentioned in EmunahSpeak: A Gut Rehab.

It's the Satan's curve ball.

Don’t swing at it!