Welcome to the Daily Chizuk. Someone I know very well just informed me that he had a baby boy. He was so thankful and kept saying, “Hashem is so kind, Hashem is so kind.” He said that two and a half years ago, he had his first boy, and it was a very rough delivery. The baby was very big, they had an emergency C-section, and the baby was in critical condition. After many tears and many tefillot (prayers), Baruch Hashem (blessed is Hashem), the baby survived and is doing great.
This time, the doctor told his wife, “Be very careful and don’t eat too much, so the baby doesn’t get to be too big again.” The wife was very nervous; she didn’t want to eat. Her husband told her, “Don’t worry, just be normal. Don’t eat too much, but be normal. Hashem is going to help us, Hashem is going to help us.” The woman ended up going into labor about a month early and had a very easy delivery, Baruch Hashem. The baby was seven and a half pounds. The doctors told them, “You’re so lucky, because the baby usually grows a pound a week in the ninth month, and if she had gone full term, who knows what would have happened? Who knows how big the baby would have been?”
So the man was saying, “Look how Hashem protected me from danger and caused the baby to come out so far in advance. Hashem is so kind.” But one might ask the question: Obviously, Hashem wanted this baby to come out okay and there to be an easy labor. Why did Hashem make the baby so big and cause it to come out so big? He should have come out a month early. Hashem could have made the baby smaller and let it go full term.
I once heard a similar point made by the great Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Yehuda Adler shlita (may he live long). The rabbi said that in the early 1960s, a missile was shot into Me'ah She'arim and hit a gas line. There was a big explosion, and everyone there was at risk. Thirty seconds later, another missile was fired and hit a nearby water line, which also exploded but put out the fire, and no one was killed. Was harmed.
The rabbi asked, “Obviously, Hashem was protecting the Jews of Me'ah She'arim, and He didn’t want anyone to get hurt. So why did He cause both missiles to hit like this? He could just as easily have made it so the missiles either didn’t work or totally missed.” And the rabbi answered, “If the missiles totally missed or didn’t get fired, we wouldn’t have seen Hashem’s protection. Sometimes Hashem shows us the dangers out there and then saves us just so we can feel His love.”
If this man had just had a seven and a half pound baby after nine months, he would have been very happy. But I don’t know if he would be walking around telling everyone, “Hashem is so kind, Hashem is so kind.” Hashem showed him the potential danger and then saved him. And now the bond with Hashem is so much stronger.
This lesson could be applied to so many situations in our lives. Whenever you see a potential problem and it never happens, that’s Hashem’s compassion showing you that He was protecting you. Have a great day.