Welcome to the Daily Chizuk (encouragement). The Ramban writes in Parashat Bo that the kavanah (intention) of all the mitzvot (commandments) is for us to believe and recognize that Hashem created us, that there is no other purpose, and that all Hashem wants from us is to know that we are His creations. Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz writes similarly: The yesod (foundation) of all of life is to know ki li kol ha'aretz, that Hashem runs the world.
One of the greatest mitzvot that exemplifies someone who understands that Hashem is running the show is a mitzvah we have in this week's parashah: Shemitah, where the landowner is commanded to let all of his lands lie fallow for a whole year. We have people in today's times who own fields in Israel with acres and acres of crops worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they watch them all wither away during the Shemitah year. The Midrash (rabbinic interpretation) calls them giborei koach: people with tremendous strength. Normally, when you do a mitzvah, it's for one day, for one week, or a month. But to do a mitzvah for a whole year—we have a hard time closing our businesses just for Shabbat and Yom Tov (holiday).
A rabbi I know said he was once in Israel during Shemitah and asked one of the big landowners, “How do you have the strength to watch all your produce die like that?” The man said, “Revach vehatzalah ya'amod laYehudim mimakom acher (Relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place). Hashem is in charge. I'm not worried.” He said, “I will not lose.” Only someone who knows that even when he is working and planting his field, he's not really doing anything. It's all Hashem. So, too, the same Hashem who gives me when I plant is telling me now that He'll give me without planting.
But people say, “Come on, I don't do anything. I plowed, I planted, I harvested.” Rabbi Ephraim Waxman once said, “You think you grow the crops? Who gives the sunlight? Who gives the rain? Who puts all the nutrients in the ground? And the photosynthesis? And all the miracles that have to take place for a seed to grow? I planted a field? You did nothing.” People say, “I made money. I made a smart investment.” Just to dial a phone number, more data has to go into moving your finger around than all of human action since the world was created, just to call your broker to make an investment. And you say, “I made money?” There are a hundred billion neurons in a human brain. And there are complexities of the different combinations of how they work together. There are more combinations of circuitry in the human brain than there are elementary particles in the whole universe. But I had an idea.
They tell a story of Rabbi Gershon Liebman from France. He made 80,000 Ba'alei Teshuvah (returnees to religious observance). His students said, “I made a book of all of his classes,” and they gave it to him. He was looking at it, and he kept saying, “Wow, what a beautiful chidush (novel insight). Wow, beautiful.” And he was loving every page. They asked him, “Rabbi, I thought you were a humble man.” The Rabbi said, “You think just because Hashem passed this chidush through my brain that I did anything? Hashem did it. I didn't do anything.” The more we understand, the easier it will be to do the mitzvot. And Aderaba, just the opposite, it's the performance of the mitzvot which gives us this recognition, as the Ramban said. Shabbat Shalom.