In this week's Parashah Vayera, we read about the nisayon of Akedat Yitzchak. Avraham Avinu was asked to do something that went against everything he understood and everything he stood for. But whatever the will of Hashem was, he was happy to do it. After he passed this test, Hashem told him that he would be greatly blessed and have an abundance of children. Hashem promised him great blessings in the merit of what he had just done.
Thousands of years later, we are still speaking about Akedat Yitzchak in our tefilot, asking Hashem to remember that zechut and have mercy on us. Avraham Avinu performed a great act of mesirut nefesh, and its zechut continues to stand for us throughout the generations. We have no idea how powerful a mitzvah is or how far its effects can reach, especially when a person does something very difficult. The zechut is greater than we could ever imagine.
A woman told me a story about her thirty-two-year-old daughter who has been waiting many years to get married. A couple of weeks ago, her family was discussing what they could do as a zechut to help her find her zivug. They decided that, at least for that week, they would all accept Shabbat thirty minutes before candle lighting. Everybody took the commitment seriously. They made extra efforts to finish all their preparations early, and they had in mind that it should be a zechut for this young woman.
That same week, a friend asked the young woman to go with her upstate for Shabbat to help her with something. They planned to leave Thursday after work, but then she found out that her twenty-four-year-old cousin had gotten engaged, and the family was making a lechaim Thursday night. She told her friend she would have to leave later because she wasn't going to miss it. She wanted to be there to show how genuinely happy she was for her cousin, and she didn't want anyone to even think that she might be upset because someone so much younger than her was getting engaged while she was still waiting. She wanted to share in the simchah wholeheartedly. So she went to the lechaim, celebrated with her cousin, and afterward got into her car to drive upstate.
While she was driving on the highway, a deer ran in front of her car, and she hit it. The car went completely out of control. It began spinning, and no matter what she tried, she couldn't stop it. She even tried putting the car into park, but nothing helped. The car went off the road, turned onto its side, and continued moving at a very high speed, heading straight toward the edge of a cliff. And then, somehow, the car stopped right at the edge.
Nobody could understand how that happened. The car was completely out of control, and nothing she did could stop it. If it had continued just a little farther, the consequences would have been devastating. But Hashem stopped the car right before that happened. The doors were jammed, and she couldn't get out. Someone called the fire department and the police, a helicopter came, and eventually they got her out. Baruch Hashem, she didn't even have one scratch on her.
The family is overwhelmed with hakarat hatov to Hashem. They can't stop thinking about how close she came to disaster and how miraculously she was saved. And they can't stop thinking about the zechuyot that came before the accident. Just days earlier, so many members of the family had accepted Shabbat early in her merit, and that same night, she had made a special effort to attend her younger cousin's engagement party and bring her happiness, despite her own difficult circumstances.
We can never know which zechut brings about which yeshua, but we know that every mitzvah we do is precious to Hashem, and the more self-sacrifice involved, the greater its value. The family accepted Shabbat early, hoping it would be a zechut for her shidduch. They had no idea that just days later, this young woman would be in a situation where her life would be in danger. And when she went to her cousin's lechaim, all she was thinking about was making someone else happy. She had no idea what was waiting for her on the highway that night.
One of the lessons we can learn from Akedat Yitzchak is how far the zechut of one act of mesirut nefesh can reach. We do a mitzvah and think we accomplished something small. We may push ourselves to do something difficult and wonder if it really made a difference, but we have no idea what's happening in Shamayim as a result of our deeds. Every mitzvah brings enormous merit, and besides the eternal reward, those zechuyot stand for us in this world as well. We should never underestimate the value of any effort we make in avodat Hashem.
Shabbat Shalom.