486 Miraculous Middle of Night Milim

Why did the Jews go down to Mitzrayim? When this question is posed to an audience, the number one answer is – Because the brothers sold Yosef. With prompting, people remember that in the beginning G-d ordained to Avraham that his descendants would be “strangers in a strange land.” The question becomes, which one of these two is the reason why we went down to Egypt? The answer clearly is…both.

Feeling like Achashveirosh, I sit, mid-night, awake from my sleep, and think about my life. Am I at this moment in my life because G-d ordained it long ago? Or - Are my decisions, my sweet and sour mistakes, what brought me here? The answer is – both.

Did my friend who died young die because the doctor took him off his heart medicine? Or - was he meant to go young, as his father before him? Lehibadel min hachayim u’min ha’meitim – Am I up now writing because G-d gently nudged me from my sleep to sit and write. Or – was it the nap I crashed into this afternoon? Both.

I see life as a gargantuan pot of soup. We cut the vegetables and simmer and stir. But the pot is so big that getting it just right seems impossible. That’s where The Chef In The Sky comes in – reaching from above, constantly tasting the soup and adding a little love and a little spice, making the soup perfect.

When young Yosef is sent to Shechem to check on his brothers, he can’t find them and it’s time to go home, when a man finds him and sends him to them. We’re told that this man is an angel, a representation of fate. The Ramban says that this little episode reminds us – “Many are the thoughts in the heart of man, but the plan of G-d prevails.”

The Rabbis almost held back from making Esther a holy book. Rabbi Chaim Schmuelewitz says that the risk in canonizing The Book of Esther is that we may miss that we can all write Megilat Esther. That story is all about how the seemingly natural move, over more than a dozen years, from Point A to Point Z, was actually miraculous. The message of that tale is that if we keep a diary of our own lives and read it after many years we’ll see that that was a miracle too.

The Ramban writes that the point of Big Miracles, like Yetziat Mitzrayim, is to remind us of the small miracles which are our daily lives. It’s been said this way - The difference between miracles and nature is how often they happen.

If this computer would suddenly catch on fire and not be consumed and then G-d told me to take off my shoes, I’d see it as miraculous. Sitting here and thinking thoughts that become words as my fingers hit little black plastic squares; this is a miracle too.