“The avodah
of bitochon is to train oneself to rely only on Hashem.
“Not Hashem plus your accountant or your expertise. Hashem knows if you have bitochon in Him or if you are relying on the doctor also or your own hishtadlus. Hishtadlus doesn’t make you a partner with Hashem. Think of it as the password to the game of life. It's the equivalent of saying "swordfish" to gain admittance. Once you have given the password Hashem takes care of 100% of the problem, not the 95% you supposedly left over for Him after you did your 5%. That Hashem’s 100% might work out to be zilch, zero, and nada of what we have set our minds on in any given situation is of no consequence because bitochon is not results oriented and therefore makes no promises. It defines how we think not what we get.”
“Not Hashem plus your accountant or your expertise. Hashem knows if you have bitochon in Him or if you are relying on the doctor also or your own hishtadlus. Hishtadlus doesn’t make you a partner with Hashem. Think of it as the password to the game of life. It's the equivalent of saying "swordfish" to gain admittance. Once you have given the password Hashem takes care of 100% of the problem, not the 95% you supposedly left over for Him after you did your 5%. That Hashem’s 100% might work out to be zilch, zero, and nada of what we have set our minds on in any given situation is of no consequence because bitochon is not results oriented and therefore makes no promises. It defines how we think not what we get.”
That’s pretty
much it as far as hishtadlus goes, but it only relates to what we view as every
day plain vanilla normative hishtadlus where we do something, and having done
it we think it’s a big deal and that we have actually accomplished something
when in reality we have done nothing more, as we said above, then say the password
that will bring Hashem onto the field so to speak.
The truth is
that if a person does his hishtadlus thing, be it work, business, school, going
to the doctor, or anything else that the world would perceive as naturally
leading to whatever goal he has targeted, and no matter how hard he works at
it he never loses sight of the fact that he is essentially spinning his wheels,
then he has reached a very high madreiga indeed.
But not quite
high enough to get a nose bleed because something is still missing.
A close relative
has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. You immediately put yourself into hishtadlus
mode and call Echo, Shuky Berman, Benny Fisher, and Meilech Firer, and anyone else who may have the knowledge necessary to point you in the direction of the right doctor, and all of
them within two minutes. And after one or
two hundred phone calls, emails, and text messages back and forth you have
finally secured what you hope is the best brain surgeon on the planet to set
things straight.
With the doctor
on board and the date for the surgery set, you then give tzeddakah in the name
of the sick relative, go to some big rebbes for brochos, and then finally with
all that done, you say Tehillim and daven for a refuah for him.
Worthy
activities all, but the first thing you should have done was to talk to Hashem,
not the last because when you talk to Hashem first you are leveraging all of
your Teva based hishtadlus by putting it in its proper context.
And when you
talk to Hashem first you’re not throwing Him a crumb as an afterthought after
having milked out of Teva whatever you thought it had to offer. You are going straight to the heart of the
matter and with your priorities in place you can then play Teva like a violin
while Hashem does the heavy lifting.
