You, dear reader may be familiar with the following story, or if not this one, one that is quite similar. On December the 4th 1994 The McNeil family of Southampton set out to the airport on the first leg of a long awaited holiday to Spain. The family of four climbed into the taxi for what was supposed to be a twenty five minute ride to the airport, perhaps a half hour in traffic. Fifteen minutes into the journey a red faced taxi driver made a painfully honest admission, ”um…I am lost”.” Ok, let’s work things out”, says the frustrated father clenching his fists in a tight ball to restrain his quivering lips from spilling out the profanities that were threatening to ooze out from between his grinding teeth. After forty minutes of rights and lefts, differences of opinion and a few hair-raising u turns they were back on track and headed in the right direction. The sun came out, things were looking bright again. ‘Chug splutter pop bang’, the car comes to a grinding halt. The car would not start no matter how hard the driver, by now drenched in sweat, tried. The family are livid, the plane is in two hours, disaster .The breakdown service arrives in record time and makes miracles; they are moving again. The journey continues, they may still make it. Finally they arrive at the airport and rush over huffing and puffing to `check in` with one and half minutes to spare, whew! But where is little Tom’s passport? GAME OVER. They have missed the flight, so near yet so far. Predictably you guessed it, what happens to the plane they missed, in midflight over the water all of a sudden shock and horror….. Nothing unusual happens.
The events in the dramatic build up to this story are nothing to report about if the plane doesn’t crash; the divine plan behind their missed flight remains under wraps. In our daily lives and indeed throughout history as a nation as a whole we have seen tumultuous calamities turn out for the good, the worst events and scenarios prove to be the best that could happen. Sometimes a generation can pass before the silver lining is revealed, sometimes more, and sometimes it never is. We know that all that G-d does is for the ultimate good. Yet sometimes it can be difficult to see.
Let us look at this week’s sedrah. Joseph is victimised by his own brothers and thrown into a pit in the company of scorpions and poisonous snakes. He is subsequently sold as a slave, and then resold; and just to make a bad story worse he is framed in a horrific scandal with the mistress of the house and ends up in jail. Those who tune out at this point cannot possibly see the slightest goodness in this awful hell ride. Yet as we know the story evolves and he is made the viceroy of Egypt. Through this he finds himself in a position to save the entire region during the famine and is able to cushion the blow of entry into exile for his entire family.
When we, in our own lives experience difficulties in which the good is seemingly impossible to find; let us remember that in the master-plan, all is for the best and when we cant see it we have simply tuned out too early. We may never know, our children may not know either. Yet He who sees limitlessly through all of time has done all for the very best.
Good Shabbos
Meir