The race is on - Balak
Three… Two… One… And the race is on! Your drive and power in order to get into this competition has been amazing. Your toil and hard work with the many years of practice has driven you to keep going, and hopefully will make you a champion in a few minutes. You are off like a rocket, zooming ahead of the other contestants! At this point you see the finish line as a watermelon and your feet as a bat where you will smash the watermelon 700000 feet! However, a minute later your race starts taking a turn for the... less good.
Sometimes over-confidence shuts you down. A person may mess up a breathing exercise, slip up on the footwork and sadly have a minor setback. No matter how many setbacks or botched up exercises that you run into, you gotta pull ahead with positivity.
In this week's parsha, Parshas Balak. As my rebbe explained to all the holy neshamos in my amazing bunk, as follows: Bilam was promised lots of money to go and curse the Jews. Bilam trained a long time for this occasion. In comparison to the race scenario, where we come off running faster than all the other contestants. But then something happens and we slow down. Bilam came out with his long time of practice being a navi, and froze. Instead of cursing us he blessed instead. The question one can ask is, what does a navi failing to do his original job have to do with someone racing and almost falling short? The answer is, in both of these situations HASHEM puts a setback in the path of a person in order to teach them a lesson.
As we move through life and have situations where we stumble, slip or miss a step we have to realize that the momentum switch only affects you for a short time! I, personally, had a tough week last week but almost at the same time I sent out my dvar torah, my life changed for the best. I am happy to say that this week has been amazing and I hope to continue with that through all the downs, and for sure with the up’s. The ultimate rise will be in a short time - and that will be with the coming of MASHIACH!
Mashiach Now All the best
Good shabbos Avroham Y Ross