Have you ever heard of a lady named Irena Sendler? Let's talk about this incredible heroine. She died on May 12th in 2008. During World War II, Irena got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto as a sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive, though. Irena smuggled Jewish infants out in the bottom of a toolbox that she carried. She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck for larger kids. Irena kept a dog in the back of that truck, trained to bark. So when Nazi guards would come over to see, the dogs would give a ferocious bark and they would stay away. During her time doing this, she had managed to save over 2,500 Jewish children. Ultimately, she was caught, and the Nazis broke both of her legs and arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she had smuggled out. She put it in a glass jar and buried it under a tree in her backyard.
After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and tried to reunite the families. Most of the families had died in the gas chambers. She helped those kids get placed in foster families or adopted. Now here's the amazing part of this story. In the year 2007, Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected. Al Gore won for a slideshow that he made on global warming. Irena did something that was superhuman, and yet the world took no notice of it. Why is it that way?
So I want to tell you something incredible that Chovat HaLevavot (Duties of the Hearts) teaches us. He tells us that you get reward from Hashem for the things that we do that the world gets to see, the things that we do on a grand scale. But in this world, the things that we do that nobody sees, the things that we do when it's quiet, the things that we do in our most private moments—that, my friends, that you get rewarded for in the world to come. Irena had done such incredible acts that had to have been in silence, that had to have been hidden from the world. And when she did that, 2,500 souls were saved by her. When she did that in heaven, it rained. And it's so true, with such a sound as to say: What kind of eternal reward can we possibly pay somebody who has done something this incredible? But that reward, for it to ring for eternity, will have to be saved for where she will be in the world to come. So that when the world down over here stood to take notice, in heaven they said, “No, no, no, that's too small for an act that is so great.”
When we are challenged in our most private moments, when we are challenged, when nobody in the world except you knows the battles that you went through—the battle scars that you have from the difficulties of not looking—and instead you were bigger, instead you were greater, just know that in heaven they're taking notice, that in heaven they are congratulating you, and they are counting what that eternal reward will look like for you as well.
It's worth the control for what your Olam Haba (world to come) will bring. It's worth the control for what your Olam Haba will bring. It's worth the control for what your Olam Haba will bring.