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Living Emunah By Rabbi David Ashear

For a 20% discount on Rabbi Ashear's new book on parnassah click the link below https://www.artscroll.com/ Books/9781422640708.html The pasuk says in this week's parashah Bechukotai that if the Jewish people are following the mitzvot properly, then when they go to war, five of us will pursue a hundred of our enemies and a hundred of us will pursue ten thousand enemies. Rashi asks, to conform to the ratio here of five pursuing a hundred, which is one to twenty, it should have said that a hundred will pursue two thousand. Why does it say that a hundred will pursue ten thousand? Rashi answers, you can't compare the zechut of many people following the Torah to a few people following it. The zechut of the many is exponentially greater than the zechut of the few. This example of war is just one of the many places where we see that things happen in this world based on our zechuyot . The more zechuyot we have, the more Heavenly help we get. People who know this are constantly looking for more ways to gain zechuyot . A man told me about six months ago, the doctor saw something of concern in his wife and ordered a retest for this past week. The test was on Tuesday and so he and his wife read the entire Tehillim on Sunday, and then he asked Hashem to please send him an opportunity to get the zechut he needs for everything to be okay with his wife. The next day, on Monday afternoon, a rosh yeshiva came to his office for the first time in his life. He brought his son with him, explaining a very important project that he was working on and asked if he would be interested in partnering with him financially to benefit Klal Yisrael. The man was so happy to get this opportunity. He understood it was sent by Hashem and he agreed to help them. Baruch Hashem, the next day, his wife was declared completely healthy. A rabbi told me, recently his wife's cell phone broke and was completely irreparable. She asked the man in the store if he could at least get her contacts off it. The man said with the issue on her phone it would take a miracle to get the contacts off, but if she wanted, she could pay twenty dollars and leave it there and he would try it. She really needed the contacts, so she said okay. The next day, her husband, the Rabbi, spotted a cell phone in the corner of the coatroom in his yeshiva. It was covered in dust and looked like it had been there for a long time. He saw it as an opportunity to get a zechut and find its owner. He picked up the phone and spent time trying to track down the owner based on the contacts. He finally got in touch with the owner's brother who gave him the number of his wife. When he called the wife's phone and told her he found her husband's phone, she immediately called her husband with excitement and said, “Baruch Hashem, someone found your phone.” It had been lost since before Pesach and because a new phone was so expensive, they were holding out hoping someone would find it. The Rabbi got the zechut of helping someone else with their phone and later that evening, the phone store called and said, it was a miracle, they managed to get all his wife's contacts off her phone. Many times, Hashem wants to give us extra help and the way He does it is by first presenting us with an opportunity to gain the zechut we need. Whether we get something out of it or not, we should always be looking to gain as many zechuyot as possible. Shabbat Shalom.