Every day in Ashrei, we say,
פּוֹתֵ֥חַ אֶת־יָדֶ֑ךָ וּמַשְׂבִּ֖יעַ לְכׇל־חַ֣י רָצֽוֹן׃
God opens up His hands and satiates to everybody, what his wills are.
Asks Rav Chaim Kanievsky, What does this mean? Many people want things and don't get them. How can we say “Lchol Chai/ everybody, without an exception?”
He answers based on the Gemara in Arachin, 16B that says an example of yissurim is if you put your hand in your pocket to get a nickel and you take out a dime instead. He says we see from this that anything that doesn't go according to a person's will is called yissurim and brings kapara, and therefore, he answers, Everybody really gets their Ratzon/will, but it’s gathered in for the debts that they owe.
What does that mean? He compares it to a king who made an announcement on the day of his party, that everyone would get 10 gold coins. Then someone walked into the party, who happened to owe the king 10 gold coins. So the king said, “Just take it off his debt.” Can we say he didn't get anything?
Of course he got something! It’s just that he got it and immediately paid it off.
Similarly here. Let's say that every day a hundred dollars comes down from the heavens for someone. But one day, he says, “ I only got $10!”
“Yes, you only got $10, because, due to your sins, needed a kapara, so we took away $90, and used it towards what you owe.”
In his Sefer Ahavat Hessed (section 2, chapter 13) the Chafetz Chaim brings this out beautifully from a famous Gemara in Bava Batra 10B, where it says, “Just like a person's mezonot/ the amount of money they're going to make is decided every single year, so too, the amount of money they're going to lose is decided every single year.”And if you merit, the money that you lose will go towards sedaka. The story of the nephews of Rav Yochanan Ben Zachai is told -He saw in a dream that they were going to lose 700 coins that year. So he kept on pushing them to give charity, but was a little short of 700 coins. Right before Yom Kippur, they were 17 coins short of the 700. Then the King's officers came and took 17 coins from them. They went to Rav Yochanan to him, and and he said, “I knew it was going to happen,” and told them about the dream. They asked him why he didn’t tell them, and he explained that he wanted them to give the Sedaka lishma.
The Chafetz Chaim says that from this story, we see that, as the Gemara says, a person’s lackings are decided every year.
But why should I lack anything? If I made $90,000 last year, does that mean I was supposed to make a $100,000 and I lost $10,000 or was I just supposed to make $90,000?
What does it mean that my losses are decided?
The Chafetz Chaim explains beautifully that it's decided not just that you're going to make $90,000, because then you get no kapara. So it was decided that you were going to make $100,000, and then the market dropped and you lost $10,000 and you ended up with $90,000. What's the difference? The difference is, as we now see, this way, you get the kapara. You get the atonement for the money that you lost. You really never got it, but God, in His mercy makes it counts for Kapara.
But, says the Chafetz Chaim, there is even a higher level- Rav Yochanan Ben Zachai’s nephews gave the money to Sedaka.
So not only can you end up that you were supposed to make $100,000 dollars, but you lost $10,000.
But if you take that $10,000, give it to charity, it counts as a loss, but it's not a loss, because it turns into a tremendous, tremendous zechut.
That's how Hashem runs the world, in this way of mercy.
Just remember, when we say,
פּוֹתֵ֥חַ אֶת־יָדֶ֑ךָ וּמַשְׂבִּ֖יעַ לְכׇל־חַ֣י רָצֽוֹן׃
God opens up His hands and satiates to everybody, what his wills are.
Hashem, open Your hands and please give me all that bounty,” don’t say, “Hey, it's not working, it's not coming in.”
It is working, you're getting it, but they're taking it away from you, in order to give you a kapara before you get it. So don't think those prayers were wasted. It's bringing you all types of atonements. What you could have gotten, and should have gotten, was taken away from you.
The Pele Yoetz, in the topic of Daagah/worry, discusses this as well. He used the mashal of a king that tells a debtor that it's impossible for someone to owe money to the king and not pay him.
“So I'm going to slide some money through your door, and you can pay me back with that. I'll even leave you some leftovers as well. I'll give you a little bit more than you need.”
That's what Hashem does. He gives us, and then He makes us lose, and that is how He gives us the kapara. That's how He pays us off.
The Pele Yoetz cites a midrash that says, Hodu L’Hashem Ki Tov,
Praise Hashem, for He is good
What's the ki Tov/good? That Hashem collects the debts in the best possible way for a person. Your wine bottle breaks, your rooster dies, you stub your toe.
God's mercy is abundant in how He looks for ways for us to pay back, in the most painless of ways. Another mashal is given of a king that said whoever committed a certain would have a large boulder dropped on him, and that boulder would kill the person. But it turned out that the king’s son committed the crime. So the king took the boulder and broke it into small little pebbles and had the pebbles thrown at his son, one at a time.
פּוֹתֵ֥חַ אֶת־יָדֶ֑ךָ וּמַשְׂבִּ֖יעַ לְכׇל־חַ֣י רָצֽוֹן׃
God opens up His hands and satiates to everybody, what his wills are.
When it looks like you didn’t get what you wanted, you did- but it was taken away from you before you got it, in a way that would cause you to get a kapara.
Have a wonderful day.