They said to one another, ‘in truth, we are guilty regarding our brother. We saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us and we did not listen. That is why this trouble has come upon us.’ Ruvain answered them saying, ‘Did I not say to you the following: do not sin against the lad, but you did not listen. Now his blood is being avenged.’ (Bereshis 42:21-22)

The brothers meet Yosef in this week’s parsha… just they did not realize it was their brother who was speaking to them. The person (Yosef) was very rough with them. The brothers began thinking why they were going through such a hard time and then they realized this was Hashem’s way of punishing them for the sin they did when they sold their brother. They began to realize they made a mistake.

I once heard a story that a woman saw a man limping and made fun of him. Every morning, this woman’s husband would wake up early and would ask his wife to make him a cup of coffee. Shortly after the woman made fun of the man who limped, the wife tripped one morning when she was bringing coffee to her husband. She broke her leg and limped using crutches for a few weeks. The day after the accident occurred the woman turned to her husband and said, “Do you know why this happened? It is because you should not be drinking coffee with sugar before davening. Hashem wanted to make sure you would not get your coffee that morning so he purposely made me fall and break my leg.”

Hashem does not just randomly make something happen. There is a reason for everything he does and it is done to that specific person because he needs it to happen to him. When you are stuck in traffic on I-95 or the NJ Turnpike or whatever road you are on, it is not because of some dumb driver who got into an accident. It is because Hashem wants you to be stuck in that traffic.

Why? Well, we don’t always know why something happens to us, but we should review what we’ve done in the past and try to figure out if we did something incorrect. Maybe Hashem is sending me a message that I need to change. Don’t be like the woman who broke her leg and blamed her husband. If she properly thought about her past, she would have realized that she was the one to blame for her broken leg.

Good Shabbos!
-yes
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